Penny Postcard’s Journey
By Deborah K. Frontiera
The Facts That Inspired This Story
On March 24, 1948, Chester Pearce, of Lake Linden, Michigan, mailed a postcard from New Orleans, Louisiana, to his friend, A. J. Beaudry. On June 7, 2021, I, Mr. Pearce’s youngest Granddaughter, who was not even born when the postcard was mailed, received a call from a second cousin on the Pearce side of my family. “The Calumet Post Office might be calling you about a postcard sent many years ago by your grandfather. They called me, but I told them you were a closer relative.”
The postcard had arrived at the Calumet Post Office with the usual daily mail from the sorting station in Iron Mountain. The only address on it was: “Mr. A. J. Beaudry, Lake Linden, Mich”. No street address, no zip code. (Zip Codes didn’t come into use until 1963.) No clue as to how it finally came to its not-quite-final destination.
The Calumet Post Office called the following day asking me if I would come and pick up the card. Their search for relatives of “A. J. Beaudry” had proved fruitless. I called my siblings to see what they might remember, and my brother recalled a Beaudry Insurance Agency that rented office space in the Pearce Hardware Store Building. No trace of the Beaudry family in the area remained. I was given the postcard on June 8, 2021, which was seventy-three years after it was mailed and seventy years after the death of Chester Pearce. I searched the internet for the name Beaudry with initials A or J and found a “James Beaudry” in Green Bay, Wisconsin. I sent a letter to the address listed explaining about the postcard but, to date, I have received no response.
According to the USPS website, as of 2021, there were 31,300 post offices handling 128.8 BILLION pieces of mail, delivering to 163 MILLION destination points using 200,000 vehicles. These figures do not take into consideration the mail handled in all the years between 1948 and 2021!
What happened to the postcard is anyone’s guess. The events of this story are from my imagination. And now you must use your imaginations to learn Penny Postcard’s story.
Penny Postcard sat in the rack, along with many others like her. She watched the man walk across the hotel lobby toward her. He thumbed through several before lifting her from the rack, saying, “This will do nicely,” before removing a fountain pen from his breast pocket. The pen tickled across Penny’s back, scrawling a message and address. Then the man approached the check-in desk, pulled coins from his pants pocket, and said to the attendant, “Could you, please, put a stamp on this and see that it is mailed?”
“Of course, sir, right away.”
The man turned and walked out of the hotel lobby. Since Penny couldn’t read herself, she wondered where she was going and what she might see along the way. The desk clerk reached into a drawer below the counter, pulled out a 1-cent stamp, licked and stuck it on Penny, and added her to the pile of outgoing mail. A few minutes later, in walked a postal worker, who placed a pile of mail on the counter, picked up the outgoing mail, and stuffed it into the out-going pocket of his bag. Penny was on her way.
Used to seeing all the goings-on in the hotel lobby, Penny was disappointed that she could see nothing from inside the postman’s bag and hoped it would be better later. She settled for listening to the sounds around her and guessing about the scenery from what she heard in the hotel lobby and saw through the windows. The tapping of the postman’s shoes on the pavement, swoosh of a revolving door at the next stop on his route—which seemed to be another hotel, because of the conversation with another desk clerk and more mail stuffed in beside her. Then honking of vehicle horns, fruuuummming of engines, whistles of traffic cops, voices on the street. A conversation with a restaurant waiter when the postman stopped for his lunch break, with a jazz trumpet blaring nearby. Then the luscious aromas of southern fried chicken and Community Coffee reached Penny.
More of the same all afternoon as the postman walked in and out of shops and businesses throughout downtown New Orleans. The part of his sack for outgoing mail grew more and more crowded. “Ooof,” could be heard from several pieces of mail as they were smashed closer and closer together, so tightly none could speak, and even breathing was difficult.
It was a great relief when the postman reached the main Post Office at the end of his day and dumped outgoing mail into a canvas bin. All the mail sighed, taking in deep breaths. Penny landed on top of the dumped-out pile since she was one of the first pieces of mail in, and, therefore, the last out. She had just introduced herself to a letter next to her when another postman came up to the bin and dumped his pile on top of them. More and more landed on top of that—another kind of squishing, but not quite so tight. Lights went out—nothing to see.
It was easier to breathe, though, so Penny could hear what the letter next to her said. “I’m a business letter headed for New York.”
“I don’t know where I’m going,” Penny said. I couldn’t read the address written on me. Would you mind? Or is it too dark?”
“Yes, it’s dark, but I’m pretty good at feeling impressions on surfaces, if you don’t mind me pushing against you.”
“I guess not, since we’ve been squashed together other all day.”
So it was that Penny learned she was intended for someone named Beaudry in Lake Linden, Michigan.
“Never heard of that town in the office I came from,” Business Letter said. “I can’t make out much of the message, though. Maybe there will be a chance in the morning.”
“At least I know a little. Thankyou.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Other similar conversations floated all around and gradually died into silence.
In the morning, all the mail was dumped into a different bin, from which armfuls were grabbed and loaded onto a large flat table with raised edges. Several postal workers stood around the table, lifting each piece of mail, looking only at the name of the state, and then whisking it into bins labeled NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW, and N. Penny was separated from the letter she had spoken with the previous evening as they were spread out, slid around, picked up and whisked into the labeled bins so quickly that none of them could talk. Before she could stop feeling dizzy, she was picked up, examined, and whisked away. She did catch NE written on the bin she landed in. The only thing she could see was a metal ceiling with rows of lights.
“Well, we meet again,” the previous night’s letter said when she settled near him. “That’s strange. There was a United States map in the office I was written in, and Michigan was to the north, whereas New York was in the northeast. I think you’ve been sorted improperly.”
“Oh, no! What will happen to me now?”
“We’ll just have to wait and see. I’ve heard incoming mail to my business talk about improper sorting causing a delay, but mail always ends up where it’s supposed to be—eventually.”
“I’m glad you know so much. Do you think you can read the message on me now?”
“Glad to oblige.”
By the time Penny knew her message, other letters, postcards, and small packages had landed on top of them, ending conversation once again.
Shortly after noon, the NE bin was rolled onto a truck, driven to the freight area of the train station, and loaded into the Mail Car. Screeee, rumrumrumrum, clank, clunk, click, and a final thump. Darkness again. Penny’s corners curled in fright.
“Don’t worry,” said a small package next to her. “I’m being returned to my sender—wrong part—that was just the freight door shutting. We’ll be on our way soon.”
“Thank you,” Penny whispered.
Hrrrunk, herruuunk, herrruuuunk. The car rolled slowly forward. Hrrunk-a-thunk-a-hrrunk-a-thunka, hrrunk-a-thunk-a, gradually faster and faster. Wheeeeeeee,wheeeeee,wheeeeeee …
Then a constant but gentle motion was so relaxing that Penny fell asleep.
She woke to the feeling of the bin being dumped onto another large table with raised edges. There were no signs in the huge sorting room indicating where she was, but this time, the bins on the other side were labeled with the four-letter abbreviations for New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. She could not see the New York letter anywhere at first, but after a few minutes, she caught a glimpse of him as he sailed into the proper bin. The room had the same look as the one she had been in before, and she could hear occasional bits of conversation among the postal workers.
A hand grabbed her. “Well, well, what have we here? Somebody down south goofed again.” He walked her across the room and tossed her into a bin like the one she had arrived in, but labeled N. Where to next? she wondered.
It would be quite a while before she found out. Other pieces of mail landed on top of her, pressing down, making conversation with other letters nearly impossible. Darkness came, light again; the bin was rolled onto another truck, back to the train station, more of the same sounds. She wondered how many days had gone by, but there was no one able to tell her. Another arrival, another dumping, another sorting table. This time she saw the letters MICH on one of the bins. Relief flowed over her surface.
But this time when she was picked up and whisked, the postal worker flung her so hard toward the MICH bin that she sailed right over the top of it, floated to the floor, and slid, carried along by momentum, slipping through the crack between the floor and the base of a counter against a wall which was covered with packages.
“HELP!” she screamed.
“They can’t hear you,” she heard close to her in the darkness.
“Who, who are you?”
“I’m another thrown-too-hard piece of mail—probably by the same man—that ended up here quite some time ago,” she said, “And who might you be?”
“I’m Penny Postcard. I’m supposed to be going to a town in Michigan. I got tossed in the wrong bin and ended up somewhere NE, then sent back to N. Do you know where this place is?”
“Well, you’re closer than before. I’m Linda Letter, supposedly headed for Peoria, Illinois, but here I am. I think this is Chicago—at least that’s what I hear most of the workers say.”
“I thought I’d have such a wonderful adventure, see so much, but all I’ve seen is the inside of bags and bins and the ceilings of train cars. Such a disappointment! How long have you been here?”
“I’m not sure. I’m going to try to wiggle closer. Maybe you can read my postmark.”
By curling their corners back and forth, Penny and Linda managed to squiggle an inch each where, in the dim light filtering under the counter, they could see each other’s addresses and postmarks.
“Oh my!” Penny said. “Your postmark says January 20, 1946! I was mailed March 24, 1948, and I’ve lost count of the days since then.”
Linda groaned. “We’ll likely never be found.”
“Don’t think that way! The workers in the hotel where I was moved the furniture twice while I was in the postcard rack, sweeping underneath. They must clean this place sometime.”
“Not for over two years it seems.”
By the second day, there was nothing left for Linda Letter and Penny Postcard to discuss, since neither of them had much life experience to share. The conversation of the postal workers, nearly the same every day, and the routine—lights on, sort, whisk, noon break, sort, whisk, lights off—only served to lull them to sleep.
In 1952, they were joined by Andy Advertisement, addressed to “Occupant, 100 First St., Anytown, Any State, who constantly bragged about the new washing machines featured on one side of him. Penny and Linda were relieved when he developed laryngitis and finally went to sleep.
In 1956, Bill Overdue, a Second Notice to a blurred name and address from Sears Roebuck Catalogue, slid into their under-the-package-counter home. Bill didn’t care what happened to him. Sears would simply mail a third notice and then repossess whatever item hadn’t been paid for. While the main sorting floor was swept daily, no one ever moved the package counter.
Linda and Penny despaired of ever being found. They slept more and more, only waking up when there was a noisy change in the sorting room, like when new lights—much brighter than the old ones—were installed. Another time, the sorting tables were taken out and conveyor belts installed to increase efficiency and reduce the number of workers needed. Workers discussed how a new “Zip Code” added to addresses made their work so much easier! But the counter the lost mail lay under was not actually part of the sorting process, so it stayed right where it was. Linda was the one who noticed that voices they had come to know were no longer heard, replaced by voices that sounded younger. Listening to the changes occupied them for a time, but as year after year went by, Penny stopped caring about anything.
The screeching sound of the counter moving came as a complete shock, waking all the lost mail from eons of sleep. The brightness of full light shining on them nearly blinded them. Scariest of all was the face masks that workers—female and male—wore. Mumbled words informed them that the whole area was to be thoroughly sanitized in a frantic effort to slow the spread of some new disease. Apparently, several of the current work crew had been hospitalized, and the upper echelon felt face coverings and cleaning would help.
With a screeching noise, the counter was dragged away from the wall. Penny was temporarily blinded by the bright light after all that time in the dark.
A worker bent down. “Well, will you look at this! How long has this mail been under here?”
“Look at these addresses—no zip codes!” said another.
And, “Check out these post marks,” said a third, holding up Linda and Penny.
“What should we do with them?”
“Call the supervisor.”
Everyone was quite amazed at what they had found. The supervisor laughed at Bill Overdue and Andy Advertisement and then chucked them in the recycle bin, but Linda Letter and Penny Postcard were taken to the Postmaster because they were “personal”. After all, somebody commented, what was their motto: “Neither rain, nor snow, nor …” nor amount of time, apparently.
The Postmaster looked at Penny and Linda in awe, shook his head, and said, “Look up the sorting station closest to each of these towns and send them on. Let those local offices figure out who receives them.”
That was the last Penny saw of her long-time friend, though she often wonders if Linda finally made it to a descendent of her original recipient. Penny was happy when the Calumet postal workers fussed over and wondered about her. It was another thrill when the granddaughter of the man who sent her picked her up. She now lives honorably in a page protector with plenty of old family photographs to talk to. Who knows? Maybe someday there will be a reply from that Beaudry in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
