A surprise arrived at my door.
Below is a social media post I wrote about that...
Unsealed: A 104 Year Old Unmailed Letter
My friend Lorie is amazingly thoughtful and will send me vintage ephemera (which she knows I collect or use as collage material) on occasion. Yesterday a thick silver bubble envelope from Lorie surprised me at the mailbox. Inside was a gold mine of vintage photos and paper items (maps, pamphlets and the like) dating from the 1900s to the 1990s. Among the lot was a piece of sealed correspondence dated 1922. It was stamped but unmailed. Inside was a form letter to traveling sales ladies (addressed to “Madam”) from The Goodrich Drug Company. Goodrich sold cosmetics and toiletries and its employees likely went door to do or hosted sales parties on the order of Avon or Mary Kay. At the bottom it stated “You are going to make a mistake if you do not travel for us in 1923.” The hand written reply on the back of the letter is from one Mrs. Adams, having been addressed to “Sirs”. She basically said she’s been busy with “quite a little business to attend to” and will send the “vanity case”, which was likely a sales and demo kit, back to them if they want it returned. Mrs. Adams sealed her reply with a 2 cent stamp and never mailed it. I don’t know the full provenance of this artifact but somehow it ended up in a place where Lorie could retrieve it and send it to me. I opened it and now it’s being shared with all of you in 2026. Here’s hoping the statute of limitations on mail theft (which is a federal offense) have lapsed. Many thanks to Lorie for continuing to generously supply me with collage fodder and specifically this fascinating look into professional correspondence from 104 years ago. PS: I’m not cutting this up. The letter and envelope are safely archived in one of my postcard photo albums.
And then we got another foot of snow...
A few nice recent eBay scores above:
1963, 1970 and 1985 respectively.
Paul Lynde was everywhere in the 1960s and 1970s.
No matter what sitcom of the past I'm watching, he
manages to show up somewhere. Here he is in a
1967 episode of That Girl starring Marlo Thomas.
Back to the unrelenting deep freeze...
Winter can be over now. I'm done with it.