Thursday 4 October 2012

Returned to Sender - 1969 letter to a penfriend

Watching Gareth Malone with the Bristol Post Office Choir singing "Returned to Sender" by Elvis Presley reminded me of a letter to a penpal in New York being  returned to me back in 1969.
As a child I belonged to a penpal club at my school and had penpals in such places as USA, Brazil, India, Italy, Germany and France. It was great receiving mail from other parts of the world with colourful stamps on and exchanging news with children of similar age but widely differing backgrounds.  I had obviously failed to put enough postage on this one, but had kept it in my stamp album since then.  Examining this letter to my USA penfriend, Pasty Takahashi I notice that the wording is slightly different from the words of Elvis's 1962 hit.   He'd have had problems trying to fit in "insufficient postage", or "Do not remail in this envelope"!  I had addressed it correctly though, with both the number and the zone!   I never did write to this penfriend again, probably fearing that no other letters would get through either and wonder what happened to her. She must have had a similar experience! If you're out there anywhere Patsy, please get in touch!

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