Christmas card arrives 93 years late

[Storm Wolf]

OBERLIN, Kan. - A postcard featuring a color drawing of Santa Claus and a young girl was mailed in 1914, but its journey was slower than Christmas. It just arrived in northwest Kansas.
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The Christmas card was dated Dec. 23, 1914, and mailed to Ethel Martin of Oberlin, apparently from her cousins in Alma, Neb.

It's a mystery where it spent most of the last century, Oberlin Postmaster Steve Schultz said. "It's surprising that it never got thrown away," he said. "How someone found it, I don't know."

Ethel Martin is deceased, but Schultz said the post office wanted to get the card to a relative.

That's how the 93-year-old relic ended up with Bernice Martin, Ethel's sister-in-law. She said she believed the card had been found somewhere in Illinois.

"That's all we know," she said. "But it is kind of curious. We'd like to know how it got down there."

The card was placed inside another envelope with modern postage for the trip to Oberlin — the one-cent postage of the early 20th century wouldn't have covered it, Martin said.

"We don't know much about it," she said. "But wherever they kept it, it was in perfect shape."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071215/...long_lost_card
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Talk about Delays! I wonder how much that card is worth...and if they could sell it on E-bay?

[gobo]

I knew I should have mailed that card earlier in the week.

[Spitfire]

Timing Is Everything style.

[Raph's Girl]

Fraking postal service. They're hardly on time.. 100 years lost in Illinois?

How'd it get from Kansas to Illinois I wonder???

[Brodie]

Is this really a current event?

[KROW]

Perhaps Illinois was still using horses to deliver mail back then and the one delivering this parcel died.

[Raph's Girl]

Originally Posted by KROW

Perhaps Illinois was still using horses to deliver mail back then and the one delivering this parcel died.

That's just it. The letter was going from one Kansas town to another Kansas town. It should never have even gone to Illinois!

[Sewer Bull]

Fun fact: A while ago, a card sent to me (Warsaw, Poland, Europe) from Edinburgh (Scotland, UK, Europe) was missent to Brisbane, Australia - and has an appropriate postal stamp proving that.

[Storm Wolf]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071225/...ds_from_heaven

ASHLAND, Ore. - Even in death, Chet Fitch is a card. Fitch, known for his sense of humor, died in October at age 88 but gave his friends and family a start recently: Christmas cards, 34 of them, began arriving — written in his hand with a return address of "Heaven."
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The greeting read: "I asked Big Guy if I could sneak back and send some cards. At first he said no; but at my insistence he finally said, 'Oh well, what the heaven, go ahead but don't (tarry) there.' Wish I could tell you about things here but words cannot explain.

"Better get back as Big Guy said he stretched a point to let me in the first time, so I had better not press my luck. I'll probably be seeing you (some sooner than you think). Wishing you a very Merry Christmas. Chet Fitch"

A friend for nearly 25 years, Debbie Hansen Bernard said, "All I could think was, 'You little stinker.'"

"It was amazing," she said. "Just so Chet, always wanting to get the last laugh."

The mailing was a joke Fitch worked on for two decades with his barber, Patty Dean, 57. She told the Ashland Daily Tidings this week that he kept updating the mailing list and giving her extra money when postal rates went up. This fall, she said, Fitch looked up to her from the chair.

"You must be getting tired of waiting to mail those cards," he told her. "I think you'll probably be able to mail them this year."

He died a week later.

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Wow.
Talk about commitment to humor.



I have a short attention span...I don't think I'd be able to construct such an elaborate plan and stick with it like that.