If you haven’t read the original newspaper story about Lucky and the mailman, it’s located here.

If you have read it, you know it ended with a bit of a cliff-hanger: did Mr. Donovan get his old route back? Did Lucky ever see him again?

We can now reveal the true answers to those questions: No! and more importantly, YES!

Arthur Donovan apparently didn’t ever get his old route back, but he did retire less than a year after the transfer. And what did he do as soon as he retired? Started visiting his old friend Lucky every day. The story of Arthur and Lucky’s reunion was a national story, just like the original story the year before. This clipping is from a Corpus Christi newspaper.

The radio reminds me that today is the 90th anniversary of the Halifax Disaster. On December 6, 1917, two munitions ships collided in Halifax harbor, resulting in the largest manmade explosion prior to the introduction of nuclear weapons. Two thousand people are believed to have died.

Several years ago, the late columnist John Gould told the story of the disaster from the viewpoint of his father, a Railway Post Office clerk who worked on the Boston to Halifax Maritime Express:

The Halifax disaster, seen from a railway post office
Christian Science Monitor

More postal history from the Southwest- this time it’s Tucson’s turn:

It was a bone-jarring, elbow-jabbing ride through hostile Apache country. At one time it was also about the best way in or out of Tucson. The next time you’re whining about taking off your shoes at the airport, say to yourself: “It could be worse. I could be a passenger on the Jackass Mail.” Named not for the stagecoach passengers’ temperaments but for the fact that they had to get out of the coach and ride mule-back over the route’s roughest spots, the Jackass Mail first lurched into Tucson the summer of 1857.

Mail service helped to put Tucson on the map Arizona Daily Star

The Sierra Sun has an interesting piece about the early history of airmail in the American West. A sample:

On a flight to Reno in March 1927, Burr Winslow had an oil line break on him as he was crossing Donner Summit. Blinded by leaking oil, he managed to cut his motor off, and glide into the Truckee emergency field. The rough, hard crusted snow on the strip caused the nose of the plane to dig into the snow, flipping over the biplane on its back. Winslow was unhurt, but the plane was badly damaged. The mail and pilot were hauled to Truckee by sleigh, and put on the train to continue the trip eastward.

Sierra Air Mail pilots: heroes of the sky

If you think labor relations in the USPS are not so hot these days, check out this film from 1978: