Let's Give a Shout-out to Our Mail Carriers

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of the night stops these carriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.

No, these words are not the motto of our postal service though for the last 100 years, that’s what people believed. They were actually written by Herodotus in 500 B.C. about the Persian Wars. Still it fits like a Michael Jordan high-end sneaker. Nothing has ever seemed more reliable than our mail but suddenly they can’t do anything right. They can’t be trusted, the agency is corrupt, inept, disorganized, and worst of all dishonest. It’s gotten so, that the ordinary American is frightened to send a stamped letter and deposit it into the mailbox.

But the postal service, born in 1775, has a top-notch rating though many have tried to trick the system. Hundreds have been caught, fined, and sent to prison. Still, there are some who’ve beaten it for their own egregious use while other incidents became laughable, even sobering.

In 1849, a Virginia slave dreamed of mailing himself to a place where there were no slaves at all. With $86 and the help of a storekeeper, he was boxed up with water and biscuits before sending himself up north. A Philadelphia abolitionist agreed to receive the package.

The journey began on March 23 and ended 27 hours later. The box was passed from wagon to railroad to steamboat, often turned upside down, but he must’ve kept quiet because nobody heard him, and on March 24, the box arrived in Philadelphia, and he was released as a free man.

In 1914, the parents of May Pierstorff wanted to send their five-year-old daughter from Grangeville, Idaho to her grandparents in Lewiston, Idaho. The railroad ticket cost too much, so they decided to mail her instead. Upon her arrival in Lewiston, the postmaster unboxed her and delivered the child to her grandparents’ house.

Six years later it became illegal to send humans by mail.

Still, how reliable is our postal system?

In 1958, Harry Winston decided to gift his $350 million Hope Diamond to the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in Washington, D.C.  He sent it by registered mail from New York, paying $2.44 for postage and $142.85 for a million dollars worth of insurance. Letter carrier, James G. Todd picked up the package at the City Post Office in Washington and drove to the museum. Entering the side door of the Gem Room, he placed the box into the hands of Leonard Carmichael, Secretary of the Smithsonian.

The deed was done.  

The next day Harry Winston told the Washington Evening Star, “It was the safest way to send it.”

So get your hands off our postal service, Trump, and let’s hear some cheering for our downtrodden but hardest working men and women of all.

  

The Breck Girls

Ever hear of the Breck Girls? Am I getting too old or do you remember Breck Shampoo advertised in many women’s magazines, usually on the back cover of Glamour, Seventeen, Ladies Home Journal, Vogue, and Harper’s Bazaar?

It was created in 1930 by John Breck, who believed “every woman was different,” and placed ads displaying a unique face every month. The first chosen was family, friends, employees, and even strangers on the street. In 1936 Breck’s son, Edward took over the management and hired artist, Charles Gates Sheldon, who preferred to draw lovely women, instead of clicking still photos. His first portraits were done in pastels with a soft focus that included halos, light, and color surrounding them.

They were stunning in their beauty and in their romantic portrayals.

In 1957 Ralph William Williams succeeded Sheldon and chose professional women until 1972 when Kim Basinger, prior to her acting career, won her chance and walked in for the shoot with her gorgeous mother, Ann.

The artist and his assistants gaped at them both, and for the first time in the company’s history, a pair of faces graced the back covers, and women were thrilled with the change.

The ads became bolder, and other groups followed, including single portraits of Cybill Shepherd, Farrah Fawcett, Cheryl Tiegs, and Brooke Shields, among others.

But beauty and makeup changed over time. The artificial look of the thirties through fifties with pencil-thin eyebrows, darker lipsticks, and glistening rouge across the cheeks morphed to more natural looks while still remaining feminine.

I used to wait for next month’s Seventeen, and later, Ladies Home Journal, before flipping to the back cover and studying the newest face. Oh, this one was gorgeous, I thought, while figuring how I could make my hair look that.

I never came close.

In 1990 Breck sold out to the Dial Corporation that was bought by Henkel, who licensed it to Dollar Tree and produced it for institutional use. It was a long winding trail, and along the way the Breck Girls got lost in the numbers.

Sad, I thought, until I learned that the Smithsonian Museum of American History had collected them all. Like Fonzie’s jacket and Dorothy’s ruby slippers, we can still view the loveliest of twentieth century American women.

Unhappy White House Wives

 

When I heard that Donald and Melania had a nasty fight on inauguration day, I chuckled, studying the video of them dancing the evening together. They sure didn’t look too happy. Neither smiled nor spoke, and they barely held each other close. Like two wooden dummies, they fulfilled their obligations and attempted to force their miserable faces into a happy expression.

After the inauguration, Melania flew to New York to finish packing but was late arriving back to Washington because she refused to show up until she renegotiated her prenup. Smart lady, I thought. Get it done before he throws you aside like he did all the others. 

I wondered how many other presidential couples had to fake it in the public eye. Turns out there were lots of them, but Warren and Florence Harding rise to the top, barely tolerating the other.  Harding won the presidency in 1921 but died two years later. His time in office was short, but hardly sweet. His friends were crooks, like Trump’s, and although he was never implicated, he showed lack of judgement and foresight.

In other words, he was just plain dumb while busily loving his mistress. He fathered a daughter, Elizabeth Blaesing, in 1919, the only child he ever had. Although Florence felt no love for him, she was devastated by the rumors of the child and soon learned the truth. One man wrote a book about the affair while others claimed it was nothing but a lie.

When his scandals began going public, Harding decided to tour the country and explain his policies when he died of a sudden heart attack in his San Francisco hotel room.

Florence claimed she had been reading to her husband at the time of his passing, but one journalist stated she had actually poisoned him. 

She didn’t, or probably didn’t, the scholars say, but we’ll never know for sure.

There were lots of unhappy marriages though Andrew Jackson had the opposite problem. He loved his wife Rachel so passionately that he was willing to die for her.

When Rachel was seventeen, she married an abusive man and continually suffered his beatings and black eyes. When Jackson came upon her, she was still married but covered with bruises. Sickened by the horror, Andrew rescued her, and they lived together unmarried until they tied the knot in 1791.

Trouble was, her divorce didn’t come through until 1793, which meant Rachel was married to two men for a couple of years. Word got out, and John Sevier, the Tennessee governor, cracked a joke about Rachel’s infidelity to Jackson. Enraged, Jackson drew his pistol. Shots rang out, but no one was killed.

Yet things turned uglier the next time around. After arguing about a horse race that turned into a fight about his wife, Jackson got shot but still managed to kill the man. 

The presidential election became downright dirty, and the stress grew so intolerable that Rachel died soon after, never living to occupy the White House. Heartsick and bitter, the seventh president entered the mansion alone.