BELDING, Mich. — We’ve all likely experienced delays with the post office, but probably not like this.
A Belding woman says she just got a postcard yesterday that was postmarked 100 years ago.
“Yea, that’s a little too slow,” Brittany Keech said about a potential USPS delay in delivering a postcard.
When she walked to her mail on Tuesday she had no idea what she was about to find.
“It was sitting right on top of the mail,” she said.
It was an old Halloween postcard that was possibly lost in the mail.
“I start looking at it and I’m like, ‘ok it’s been through some wear and tear’’, she said.
You can see just how old it is. There’s a George Washington one-cent stamp in the corner, and a postmark of October 29th, 1920, from Jamestown.
Brittany talked about the front of the card that fits with this time of year.
“It shows a witch with a cat and and a goose and an owl and says, ‘Halloween greetings. Which would you rather be? A goose or a pumpkin head?’
The writing is old and in cursive and addressed to a Roy McQueen on Division Street.
The note says:
Dear Cousins,
Hope this will find you all well. We are quite well but mother has awful lame knees. It is awful cold here. I just finished my history lesson and am going to bed pretty soon. My father is shaving and my mother is telling me your address. I will have to close for a night. Hope grandma and grandpa are well. Don’t forget to write us - Roy get his pants fixed yet.
Flossie Burgess
Brittany posted the letter on the “Positively Belding” page on Facebook and it already has more than 100 comments and dozens of shares.
She hopes out of all those views someone can put her in touch with a relative to get it to the family.
“This might be something that their parents can say, ‘yea I remember when your great-great grandma would tell me stories.’”
Brittany says if she can’t find the family she’s gonna try and get it put into the museum in Belding.
We did reach out to the post office for comment and a spokesperson told me, “In most cases these incidents do not involve mail that had been lost in our network and later found. What we typically find is that old letters and postcards – sometimes purchased at flea markets, antique shops and even online – are re-entered into our system. The end result is what we do best – as long as there is a deliverable address and postage, the card or letter gets delivered.”
