Bright Ideas

In the 19th century, the Pony Express carried the mail 1860-1861. It was very expensive with a one-page letter costing the equivalent of $19.00. That was too expensive for the general population. The telegraph went into service then, and the Pony Express became a romantic memory.

For all it’s flaws, the U.S. Postal Service does its best to serve the general public.

When the Postal Service wanted to establish a Post Office here, they thought it was a good idea to name it after a Sioux girl, Ijkalaka, the wife of David Harrison Russell, a scout.

Rumor has it the Postal Service changed the spelling to Ekalaka, to make it easier to understand. Most out-of-county people still don’t have a clue how to pronounce it.

We send messages to one of my relatives via email. Younger people use Facebook or Messenger. Our cell phone is simple, and while it will take pictures, our daughter has to do that; we forget how. Our computer won’t let us message anymore. We don’t “tweet,” or “text.” I suppose some people our age know how to perform these functions; our President certainly does. He’d be better off forgetting that skill — certainly in the middle of the night.

Does anyone write letters? Form the vowels and consonants, leaning to the right, the way they were shown on the cursive alphabet sample in the front of second grade class rooms. Cursive writing is now taught in few of our nation’s schools; luckily we still have it in Ekalaka, but for how long? The computer doesn’t work in cursive script, at least I haven’t found it. Everything is printed.

My aunt forms her cursive script beautifully, even if she thinks they look like “chicken scratchings;” her husband’s “writing” probably would. It makes me so happy to see her hand-written letters. She used to type on a keyboard, but their printer died. I type the letter and print it. But when we’ve suffered similar problems, I resorted to phone calls—always on Sundays, at $.10 or $.11 a minute.

I should limit those calls, but I don’t; they usually last an hour. We can afford one of those every other month. When I start talking to my aunt, I could go on and on. I do the same with my step-dad, but he pays for the calls. His arm falls asleep, even as he changes arms.

I’m getting more and more like my mother. Her weekly calls went on and on, for an hour too!