One morning about ten years ago my computer had a little spell. It was so annoying I wrote a column about it. It refused to allow me to access my contact list, which put me to thinking about how it was in the “good old days” when I had kept written lists of addresses and phone numbers. I confess, I have since then reverted to using those old methods more times than once. Old habits are hard to break. At the time, there were always two or three phone books lying around and almost everybody’s mailing address could be found there except for those who lived in post office boxes.
Things had really changed. Phone books had become dinosaurs since more and more of us no longer had landlines and we could find what we needed online. Online info even included zip codes, that modern invention that put us in yet another cubbyhole.
In the golden age before phone books and computerized contact lists, I grew up in a household which received mail in a post office box, regardless of our physical address. Our mailing address was always P. O. Box 215, Dalton, Georgia, although at different times we lived on Spencer Street, Grace Street, on a rural postal route, and on Looper Bridge Road. Years later I discovered just how magical the postal delivery service had been. They could deliver mail when the address was only a person’s name and the city. In fact, for mail being sent to and from persons within the same city, the one word, “City” sufficed for the location of the recipient.
In Woodstock, my friends, sisters Sara and Marie Howell Poor, are said to have received mail addressed simply “Sara and Marie, Woodstock Georgia.” That was before there was mail delivery in town, and everybody got their mail at the post office where the workers knew every person in town. Outside of town, Rural Free Delivery, RFD, mail carriers knew all the families on their routes. A simple “Rt. 4” was all that was needed for me and my family to get mail at our home in South Canton during the early 1960s. In fact, I received a letter there from a new-found half-brother in New Jersey with a bit more info than needed, perhaps. It was more specific and included the name of the road, 6’s Road! It took us a while to teach him about our dialect.
During those golden decades, we had no way to obtain house numbers for addresses. If we needed to send a letter to Uncle Jim in the Big City and we had only the name of the street, we were at the mercy of the mailman there. We could only hope that an accommodating mailman would deliver our letter. I am always baffled, even now, when occasionally a piece of mail is returned to me because the house number is off a couple of digits. Does the mailman not know that these folks live just down the street? After all, he delivers mail to them every day. Yet he can bring our neighbor’s mail to us even when it has their correct address on it.
I’m thinking that it’s all because we’ve become too big for our britches. Perhaps there are little towns where the old methods still exist. In the collection of merchandise relics in Dean’s Store, there once were packages of stationery where the pages and the envelopes were edged in black, a signal to the recipient and to the mailman that a death message was enclosed. Telegrams and the telephone replaced that touching method of correspondence.
But who among us does not still delight in the arrival of a personal note or letter in the mail? Even with constant email messages popping up, just to see a familiar handwriting and a friend’s return address quickens our pulse and causes us to be thankful for such a friend. While I am thankful for the convenience of emails, I do miss that feeling of anticipation, that tangible evidence of someone’s thoughtfulness. (Not to say that emails are thoughtless! In fact, the more, the merrier.) Neighbor Bertha Barnes used to have her brother deliver handwritten notes to folks all over town. It was much better than a phone call, and even better than a store-bought greeting card. I kept every note she sent to me, and reading those today brings back very precious memories. Try doing that on a newfangled computer.
Also, we had no problem with reading that well-formed script of the generations before computers. Those folks felt their feelings and thoughts were important, and if they were to be preserved for future generations, they had to be legible. Just imagine Elizabeth Barrett Browning sending these words to Robert in an email: “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” And she would never have needed a calculator to do just that.
On the other hand, the printed word is a blessing, and I use it now to share my thoughts with you. Thanks for reading.
Juanita Hughes is the City Historian of Woodstock and a regular columnist for the Cherokee Tribune. This column was originally published in the Cherokee Tribune.
