In this episode of The Good News with Angie Austin, explore the rich history of the United States Postal Service with Elliot Gruber, director of the National Postal Museum. Dive into the dynamic development of America’s mail system—from horseback deliveries to state-of-the-art technology—learn about famous figures who contributed to its growth, and discover the unique human connections fostered through everyday mail interactions. This enlightening segment will leave you with a newfound appreciation for the postal service’s pivotal role in American life.
Welcome to The Good News with Angie Austin. Now, with The Good News, here’s Angie.
SPEAKER 03 :
It’s Angie Austin and Jim Stovall on The Good News with Angie Austin and Jim today. Hey, Jim.
SPEAKER 04 :
Hey, it is great to be with you as always.
SPEAKER 03 :
We’re talking about your column Window on the World. And when I first saw the title, I thought, oh, you know, Jim likes to travel. So do I. And if you haven’t heard Jim before, Jim is blind. Now, do you say blind or do you say unsighted or not sighted?
SPEAKER 04 :
Blind works great. Everybody knows what you mean. You know, I mean, if you say these other things, people always ask, what do you mean? And you end up saying blind. It’s just easier.
SPEAKER 03 :
Jim, you’re so funny. It works. OK, so I you know, you like to travel and I like to travel. You have a favorite place in San Diego. We always talk about that. I’m just dying to go to. And last time I was there. I attempted to get over there, and for some odd reason, we couldn’t drive over to see it, because I’ve got to visualize it, you know, because you’ve spoken about it so many times, and you go with Crystal, and you go at least once a year. Anyway, I thought, does Jim go to Europe? Because I have not been to Europe yet. My husband hasn’t either, which is odd for people our age, and You know, we’re fairly successful people. And all of my friends that I travel with, the three that I really do a lot with, well, actually four, are going to Europe, not together, but on different trips this summer. And I said to my husband, I said, you know, this is like the third summer that I’ve asked you if we could go to Europe. And I said, I’d really like to do that. And he said, we have kids. And I said, no, that’s not the excuse. When I was going to go with my cousin, he said, well, I want to go, too, because my cousin goes a lot to see her sister in Germany and then travels all over. And he said, well, I’d like to go too, but I can’t. And I’m like, well, that’s not fair. So this time it was we have kids. I’m like, these are lame excuses. And, Jim, what I think it comes down to is he gets – he’s stressed a lot about his business. And so he doesn’t want to go overseas. So he doesn’t want me to go if he can’t go.
SPEAKER 04 :
You know, I used to – before I went the first time, you think, wow, it’s like this far-off thing. And, you know, and – You know, I live in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and we connect everything in Dallas. When we die and go to heaven, you have to lay over in Dallas.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s funny.
SPEAKER 04 :
And so, you know, I’m used to going to Dallas and then catching a four-hour flight to New York or whatever. And, you know, so you go six or six and a half hours, and you’re in London or Paris or wherever you’re going. And it’s really amazing. And our last trip, Crystal and I went. And I had a friend that had just been and he said, man, I hired this driver for the whole week. He’s kind of an elite guy and he’ll just stay with you all week and go places. He knows the language. So I hired this guy. And so we’re in riding in from the airport. And I said, so you do this every week? He said, yes, sir. And I said, so. So who did you have last week? He said, the Sultan of Brunei. And who are you going to have next week? He said, Elton John. Oh, my goodness. I said, I’m the weak link here. This is a slow week for you. And then he laughed and said, I’m looking forward to it. You know, he got us, you know, we went to the Palace of Versailles and the line’s four hours long. He drove right up to the door and got us in, and then we went to Normandy Beach, and I did not know. I hadn’t been paying attention to the calendar, and we got there on Memorial Day on Normandy Beach, and he got us right in, and we sat next to a general, and they did this amazing review, and then all of these graves, and just such an emotional thing, and then we went to… Actually, we went to the Louvre, and Crystal wanted to see Mona Lisa and several other things. Well, I said, I’m not going in there. I’m not standing out in line. So I sit on this bench outside in the courtyard, and they have a statuary out there. And I’m sitting there, and a girl comes over to me, a French girl. We discovered fairly quickly her English was slightly better than my French, so we’re struggling through this. And she said, why aren’t you going in? And I explained to her, I’m blind, I can’t go in. And she went and talked to this guy, and then says, follow me. And I cannot believe to this day I did this. I don’t know this woman, but I walk off with this woman over into this young girl, and She, we get behind the rope, and we, it was Rodin’s Thinker, the deal with the guy sitting there thinking and everything, and I got to touch this sculpture, and it was cool and everything. Oh, my goodness. I called my publisher that day, and I said, when’s the new book coming out, Wisdom of the Ages? And he said, a couple weeks. I said, do we have a cover for the second edition? He said, no. I said, we do now. Put Rodin’s Thinker on there. So there’s one edition of that book that has that. But then I went in, and I sat in the gallery next to where the Mona Lisa was, and I heard all these people that had come in from all over the world, and I heard their reaction.
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, that is the coolest thing. That is so cool. I would never think to do that, to see how everyone else is reacting.
SPEAKER 04 :
You know, I wish greatly that Leonardo could have been there, because just to see something you did 500 years ago is still inspiring people that much. And it’s on my project list. Someday I’ll write a book about Leonardo. But anyway, I highly recommend it. It’s wonderful. And it’s – but everywhere I’ve ever been outside of the US, I’m glad to go, and I’m really glad to get back to America. It’s a wonderful thing.
SPEAKER 03 :
Only you, Jim, can I ask some innocuous question where I get like – you were with the driver. You got the Elton John tour basically of Europe, the Sultan of Brunei tour, the red carpet where you roll out and miss the four-hour line, and you get to touch the thinker. And I the food I’m into the food and I just even like going to New Orleans and trying different things that maybe I wouldn’t normally order. But I’m like, you know what? I have to get the turtle soup or I have to try the crawfish or whatever it is, because this this is this is the food here. You know, you’ve got to taste it. And I had the best meal I’ve ever experienced at Commander’s Palace in New Orleans before.
SPEAKER 04 :
Love it. I’ve been there. Yeah. I love that.
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, it was a myth. I mean, lunch was like $250, but you know what? It was like the best lunch I’ve ever had. I’m sure dinner is like three times that, but I wanted to ask you about the food, you know, is, is that also something like, are there any places you’ve been that you just, the food just really stands out to you where you’ve traveled?
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah. There’s a restaurant about halfway up the Eiffel tower in Paris and it’s called Victor Hugo’s and it is a, It’s an amazing experience, but do not try to decipher the menu. Have the guy help you because they serve – their specialty is horse. Oh! And I am – you know, and I don’t know why that’s worse than eating a cow, but – Right, right, right. I just don’t – no, no, I’m an American. No horse, please. No, thank you. But, no, fabulous, fabulous food, wonderful people, and – You know, people always say the French are very standoffish. We did not find that. And, boy, the closer you get to Normandy Beach, where our troops landed and freed them from the Nazis, even today, the closer you get down there, the more they love Americans, I promise you.
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, man. And in the U.S., anything that stands out to you? Any places, any types of food?
SPEAKER 04 :
Me here in America? Yeah.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, Commander’s Palace is wonderful. Jean-Georges in New York is one of my favorites. The Cow Palace in Kansas City is fabulous. You know, just there are great places everywhere. But, you know, a lot of them are little tiny mom and pop out of the way places. Yes.
SPEAKER 03 :
Isn’t that true? I love to go not to a chain when I travel. Yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
I always have a driver wherever I go and I always ask, where do you like to go? I mean, what’s your, you know, if you had your best friend in town and they got one dinner, where are you going? And it’s usually just a really good place.
SPEAKER 03 :
I always ask the locals too. Like if we have, At our hotels, there’s a van driver or whatever, and they’ll take you to different places near the hotel, and I always have them take me to their favorite spots. It’s never a chain. It’s always some local place, especially in the south when you’re getting barbecue and hot chicken and collard greens and all that stuff. I love the southern food. All right, so let’s get into your window on the world column this week and your winner’s wisdom column. What’s this all about?
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, I’m sure you and everyone listening to us is aware that people just are divided right now. They’re arguing about everything, and the news is such a big deal. When I was a kid, I had to do current events, and you would go home and watch the news. And there was only three channels of news. And they were the same. I mean, whether you’re watching Walter Cronkite or Peter Jennings or Tom Brokaw, didn’t make any difference. You know, switch ties, and it’s the same. I mean, it’s just three guys reading the news. And you know this. You’ve been in TV news. And, you know, now… You know, people aren’t arguing about their reaction to the news of the day. They’re arguing about what’s true and what isn’t. And it’s really, really amazing. So it really depends on what window you’re looking through. Whether you’re looking through clear glass, tinted glass, stained glass, really makes a difference what you’re looking at. As you know, I follow a lot of sports, and I can listen to a game. Yesterday, I listened to the St. Louis Cardinals game. And then when the other team was up to bat, I would listen to their announcers, their home team announcers. And it’s a great way to go. And I do this for a football game and everything. And then when they have… thing where they’re going to review a call, and they’re doing the instant replay, it’s fun to go back and forth, because these announcers generally, they’ve played the sport, they’ve been in it for many, many years, they know what they’re talking about, and they will see it their way. you know, the people for the St. Louis Cardinals will say, oh, no, he clearly, clearly was safe on that play. You see, we’re looking at it right here. Here he is clearly safe. And then you switch over to the godless Chicago Cubs, and their guy, who is just as good as he used to play, he said, no, no, see, right here you can see. And they’re looking at the same thing, Angie, and they’re seeing something different. It’s a confirmation bias. And, you know, if we’re going to get along, we need to go to the news of the day with an open mind. And you really can’t Just to have one source. I listen to five different newscasts every morning very, very quickly, and you can do them online. It takes 20, 30 minutes to do all five just to get the news roundup. And it’s amazing because some of them, it’s not that they’re telling the story different. They’re telling a completely different story. Something was the headline yesterday. on one network that didn’t even make the news on another one. And, you know, there’s no wonder we’re not getting on. We’re all just seeing a different view from a different window.
SPEAKER 03 :
I feel like I can’t even make sense of it all.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah. You know, and, you know, so many people, Angie, they’re looking at this and they’re, And, you know, or they’ve already made up their mind. I don’t believe so and so or this organization is corrupt or that guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about. And it doesn’t matter what they say. You know, they’ve already got their mind made up. And while you need to come to it with an open mind and and then when you meet somebody you disagree with. I really believe in Dr. Stephen Covey’s admonition, seek to understand before you seek to be understood. I mean, listen to what they’ve got to say and fully understand what they’re saying. In fact, repeat it back to them. Okay, so what you’re saying is you believe this and this and this. And why do you believe that? And then you understand their position. Then and only then do you share your position. And a lot of times you find that there’s not that much separation. We’re not as far apart as we think when you look at the two traditional parties. The extremes in both parties are just out there on a limb. But for the most part, you know, the moderate majority in the middle are great people, and we’re just not that far apart. We all want the same things. We just have a slightly different view of how we get from here to there. You know, I just think the divisiveness is so destructive. And you see people responding online. And they would never say something like that to someone in person.
SPEAKER 03 :
I know.
SPEAKER 04 :
But they will write these hateful things out there. And, you know, it’s just ridiculous. You know, and… And so we need to seek to understand and to try to find middle ground. And I had a woman tell me the other day after one of my events, never in the history of our country. Have we been more divided? And I’ve heard this from a number of people, and I always say, did you miss school the day they talked about the Civil War? I think we were pretty divided then. And we had a number of these, and we always get back together. And we were pretty divided in the 90s with Clinton and Newt Gingrich and all that stuff that was going on. Then 9-11 happened, and wow, we were all Americans. And we will get back to that. We will get back to that. But don’t burn any bridges. There are so many people, they go online and they say things to friends and family members, and you can never take those words back. And, you know, so just be aware of that because it’s there forever.
SPEAKER 03 :
I completely agree. JimStovel.com, the columnist window on the world. Thank you, friend. Thank you. Be well.
SPEAKER 02 :
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SPEAKER 01 :
Brimfield is listening to the mighty 670. KLT, Denver.
SPEAKER 03 :
Hello there, Angie Austin here with the good news. Well, the good news is today we are talking about the 250th anniversary of the most efficient mail system in the world. It’s ours, the United States Postal Service. And joining us is Elliot Gruber, director of the National Postal Museum. And I want to get out there, Elliot, because I’ve been talking to my kids about heading out and seeing all of those unbelievable Smithsonian museums out in D.C.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, hopefully you’ll come to the Smithsonian National Postal Museum first.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, I am definitely adding it to my list because I was looking at how things have changed and some of the new more relevant, you know, and the exhibitions being having more impact, et cetera. So we’ll talk about that in a minute. But let’s just first start with how can it be that the Postal Service is older than the United States and why is it the best? I had no idea you served so, you know, that you guys delivered so much of the mail basically for the world.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, yeah, the Postal Service in the United States is by far the largest of any postal system in the world. And the Postal Museum tells those stories from 250 plus years ago. And so, as you said, you know, how can it be that the Postal Service is older than our country? So we look at our anniversary, you know, as July 4, 1776, and it was almost a year before that. That the postal service service or the post the department at the time was created by the Second Continental Congress why communication communication was essential. To connecting 13 colonies communication was essential because you didn’t want the British reading your mail or intercepting your newspapers and finding out what you were thinking of doing. And so, yes, so July 26, 1775, only a few months after the battles of Lexington and Concord, the Second Continental Congress actually formed the Postal Department.
SPEAKER 03 :
Now, when we talk about the mail around the world, I didn’t really think about the USPS in that manner. And even though the US only makes up 4% of the population of the world, the US Postal Service handles 44% of mail across the entire globe. I had no idea.
SPEAKER 05 :
You know, it’s mind-numbing when you hear those numbers. And then you think of what almost 165 million or so household and business addresses that they have to deliver to Every single day. Well, six days a week. And in some cases they also deliver on Sundays. So it’s an it’s an incredible operation that they have. I think they have over 600,000 employees. And at the Postal Museum. What we like to say is that, you know, postal history is American history. And you think from what we’ve been talking about with the founding of our country, you think about, you know, airmail, you think about all of these different aspects of our country. In some way, the postal system and the postal service has been integral to make that happen.
SPEAKER 03 :
You know, when I think about Ben Franklin, I don’t think Postal Service. So how did Ben Franklin become our first Postmaster General?
SPEAKER 05 :
I’m laughing because actually most people don’t think of that. I mean, and if you look at the first two stamps this country has issued in 1847, there were two people on the stamps. One was George Washington. Everyone gets that. First President of the United States. And the other, a lot of people are surprised, like, Benjamin Franklin, not like Thomas Jefferson or some of these other founding fathers, but Ben Franklin actually was a logical choice. He had a lot of experience being a postmaster. In the 1730s, he was the postmaster of Philadelphia. He, 15 or so years later, he became the deputy postmaster general for all of North America. And by the way, he was successful. He streamlined the operations. He made the Postal Service profitable for the British. And until, of course, they fired him in 1774. Why did they fire him? For being too much of an American. Oh, one year later. Right. Right. One year later, of course, the Second Continental Congress is going to appoint him as the first postmaster general.
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, that’s interesting. I’m curious because I’ve seen in small towns. My my cousin lives up in the middle of nowhere in northern California. And so they talk about their friends who deliver the mail up there. And I’m like, well, what do you mean? They work for the post office world. They’re like regular people. And then, you know, and they are in their regular car and they’re delivering mail up there. And I’m like, wow, it’s very challenging because it’s very spread out. It’s very desolate. It’s like a lot of hermit type people, you know. And I was like, oh, I didn’t even know this type of mail delivery existed, because in many of my neighborhoods, we had had those big boxes where, you know, 250 people get their mail. And I’m back in the old school now where they we have like three acre plot, you know, lots. So that mailman drives right up to my house and even comes to my door and brings me things. So how has the way that the mail was delivered changed over the past 250 years? What are some of the big changes that you’ve seen?
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, there have been tremendous changes from mail carriers on horsebacks in the 1700s to stagecoaches going out west to steamboats to railroads with, of course, the Transcontinental Railroad. You also have Postal Service launched a service called Air Mail in 1918, not too many years after the Wright Brothers were able to get that plane up in the air at Kitty Hawk. And so you had that as a service that they were delivering. But also you talked about in the rural communities that initially, if you wanted mail, you had to go to a post office, which sometimes was a tavern, sometimes was a print shop, sometimes was a general merchandise store. But you went to get your mail. It wasn’t delivered to your home. Postal Service only started doing that around 1863, and then it grew from there. And then, of course, there was an advent in the late 1890s of what they call rural free delivery. So if you’re not in the city, why should you be treated any different? the Postal Service started delivering mail to everyone’s home, and they have that universal delivery obligation for six days a week. They need to deliver mail whether you’re right next door to the post office or you’re 200 miles away.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, I get a kick out. I like to get delivered. I don’t know. I like my postal dude, so he brings stuff right to my door when he thinks it might get taken because the front door is quite a ways away from the streets where my post office box is, and I have had some other delivery companies leave like three, four, five Nike boxes for my kids’ shoes, right? On the curb, like on the curb, pretty far away from my house. I’m like, if that isn’t saying steal me stacked up five Nike shoe boxes, which who knows how much that many shoes is worth, right? And so he would never do that. He always takes them right to my door and we chit chat or I give him a brownie or hot, give him a water or whatever. I just like the personalization of it that it offers me. But I want to talk a little bit about technology, because I know that you have really worked hard at the Postal Service that really worked hard to keep up with changing technology because you were the only guy in the game for a long time or the main guy in the game, you know, and then all of a sudden these other guys. Challenges pop up where people are like, oh, I’m going to fly this in and deliver this tomorrow. So you had to up your game a little, didn’t you, with tech?
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, and I want to be clear, that’s the postal service upping their game. I’m the museum guy. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER 03 :
I’m sorry. Just saying because you work at the museum, I thought you were familiar with how technology had changed.
SPEAKER 05 :
Oh, no, no, no, absolutely. I mean, they’ve had, you know, they’ve really, you know, from collecting and sorting machines, you had conveyor belts and optical readers, and we share those stories at the postal museum. You had barcode tracking. You have computerized routing services. And so the postal service is either creating new ways or responding to ways to integrate technology so that the mail can be delivered faster and as secure it has always been, as securely as it always has been. But I have to say that you said something about, you know, the, you know, other delivery services, if you will, that are leaving things at the end of your driveway. I’m not going to comment on that except to say that the postal service is really in the people business because you know your mail carrier. You see he, you know, you see that person, you know, often, right? You know, if you’re home, they, you know, you have this community. and this connection that’s beyond just an email or a text that you send out. It’s a live, physical, person-to-person connection. And I think that’s what’s so important with the Postal Service. And it also is extremely important when you think of, say, natural disasters. You know, we always think of FEMA as being a first responder. Postal Service is a first responder. You know, your mail carrier knows where you live, right? You know, they have physical addresses in terms of buildings in the communities around the entire country. And so I think that’s really important as we think of, you know, not just technology, but also being in the people business. And how do you get your, you know, your COVID test kits during COVID, right? That came from the Postal Service.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. When you talk about being… the people business, sorry. You talk about being in the people business. Our postman knows my son started a business at 12 and now he’s 20. So over all those years, he started delivering like a lot of packages to our house, to our house for our son. And he’d stop and say like, man, he’s really doing great in his business. He’s really getting a lot of packages. He’s got another one. And then he’s like, he’s got a huge box from the Ukraine, you know, and he’d be like, we’d be talking about his vintage business and his shoe business and, how he goes to ThriftCon and it’s just neat how he’s kind of followed him and been impressed with how he’s grown the business. So that’s been kind of fun for us as well because he’s been his main contact of getting his supply, you know, brought into our house per se.
SPEAKER 05 :
Absolutely. And you hear those stories everywhere. I went to a luncheon once and they were acknowledging the heroism of different mail carriers. And these are people being acknowledged that actually, you know, you know, this person in the house didn’t come out to, you know, to the door to get the mail that he normally does. Oh, I see some smoke. And, you know, people are being rescued by mail carriers and doing these heroic things. And yeah, I mean, it’s it’s. It’s a person-to-person contact that I think we sometimes miss when we’re just sending an email or sending a text.
SPEAKER 03 :
Now, when we talk about the mail service, you don’t think about famous people. Ben Franklin may be working for the Postal Service, but were there any other famous people who worked for the Postal Service?
SPEAKER 05 :
There were a lot of famous people. The first one to me that comes to mind is Abraham Lincoln. He was the postmaster of New Salem, Illinois. You have Harry Truman, former president, was a window clerk. You had, to me, one of the favorite ones that I’ve read about was Walt Disney. He actually lied about his age to get a job as a mail carrier in Chicago when he was only 16. Closer to home, you also have Steve Carell, worked for the Postal Service, and another famous person, Charles Lindbergh, also carried mail as well.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, I am just going to ask you one more question I’ve always been curious about. The zip codes, they’re so handy. I know when I hear them oftentimes, it’s like when I live in Southern California where someone lives. Why exactly and how did the Postal Service invent the zip codes?
SPEAKER 05 :
You know, Deb, this is fascinating. So after World War II, mail volume doubled. So how are you going to expedite delivery of mail across the entire country. And so the zip codes were this innovative system that uses numbers assigned to geographic region. And then as you go down those first numbers, it kind of almost gets down to the carrier level system. And so it was zipping the mail along But zip codes actually stand for zone improvement plan. So it stands for something. And now it’s ubiquitous in our lives, right? I mean, if you go online and you want to, you know, register for something, you want to get a pizza delivered, whatever it may be, you’re using your zip code. And one of the things the Postal Service did to encourage people to use zip codes in the 1960s, because remember, it was a new system, they created the zip family. So you have Mr. Zip, you have Mrs. Zip. And of course you have three kids. So you have the Zipp family and at the Postal Museum we have Mr. and Mrs. Zipp on display.
SPEAKER 03 :
My gosh, that’s hilarious. I had never heard of Mr. and Mrs. Zip. All right. I want to make sure, Elliot, that we can get a website from you where the listeners can get more information about the USPS’s 250th anniversary. Oh, and will the museum have any, you know, cool goings on as well?
SPEAKER 05 :
Yes. So there are two great websites to go to for additional information related to the Postal Service’s 250th and really the Postal Service’s history. One is you have USPS.org. That’s the Postal Services website. And then the Smithsonian National Postal Museum’s website is postalmuseum.org. So SI stands for Smithsonian Institution. So postalmuseum.si.edu. And there’s incredible content there. There’s virtual exhibitions. And there’s a lot of surprising stories that I think people will find very interesting. Tomorrow we actually have a very large family day at the Postal Museum. We also have guest artist programs. We are considered a family-friendly Smithsonian, if you will. So we look forward to seeing you and all of your listeners at some point in the future.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, thank you so much. Very informational. Can’t wait to get out there. Thanks, Elliot. Have a great day. Thank you.
SPEAKER 01 :
You too. Thank you for listening to The Good News with Angie Austin on AM670 KLTT.
