Little Letter Almost Lost

This little note is about a letter. A little letter. A little letter that was almost lost.

This letter traveled hundreds of miles with only a name and a town to go on. It's amazling it wasn't lost!

I love that the sun was shining. That was super important for Papa to know, obviously. And I love the weird hanging miniature c's that sufficed as periods in my nickname. The line I put on top of the capital J in Jacobsen and continued across the rest of the page makes me wonder if I had been writing unsupervised.

The letter is cute.

The included artwork is not.

What is this?

I don't know what I was drawing in this picture. Is there a house there on the right? An upside down house? Is that a flag in the middle? Are those all angry scribbles? But how could I be angry and scribbling if the sun was shining? Would this all be crystal clear if anyone had given the young artist some crayons?

But wait - I did have a crayon or two. I used it on the envelope!

The envelope in question. No return address. No street address. No real stamp. You'd think it would have no real chance of finding its way!

A five-year-old's stamp of approval.

Three colors! Such detail in my attempt to counterfeit a stamp! I'm kind of proud of little me! The post office didn't fall for my ruse, though. They must've squeezed the 6 cents out of my grandfather.

That's right - it did get to my grandfather.

That letter was addressed simply to Papa Jacobsen in Yankton, SD. No street address or post office box number. At that time, around 10,000 people lived there. Jacobsen was a fairly common surname. Surely there were other Jacobsens around town. But the letter got to Papa.

How did it get there? Luck? Friend-o-papa postman? There are soooo many questions about this letter that was almost lost!

The biggest question I have is whose writing is that on the envelope? It is big and kid-like, but it's not mine. The handwriting analysis I performed confirmed that. The postmark reads Lead, SD. Grandma and Grandpa Unger lived in Lead. So it could've been one of them.

How sweet is that idea? One grandparent making sure another grandparent shared the love! I hope that's how this happened. But I'll probably never know.

This letter was returned to sender decades later. I got it back after my papa died. Old me doesn't remember writing it or stamping it or mailing it. But it's here. Proof positive that the little letter wasn't lost. It was delivered. It was read.

And it was kept.

That's all the little letter writer ever wanted.