The American Air Mail

By Jim Hagarty
2012

Sometime around 1960, there was a terrible tornado that ripped through Michigan. A day or two after, I hopped the fence to head for the apple orchard on our farm near Stratford, Ontario, Canada when I noticed an envelope in the grass. It was addressed to someone in Michigan.

I took it to my Dad and we headed back to the orchard for a more thorough search which turned up numerous pieces of Michigan mail. I don’t remember exactly how many pieces we found and I don’t know what became of them. Perhaps Dad took them to our local post office to re-post. He speculated that the storm must have picked up a mailbag and when it came apart, the items inside just floated away.

That is a long way for the funnel of a tornado to carry pieces of paper, probably 300 kilometres, at least.

That was probably the most unusual thing that happened during my years growing up on the farm.

Author: Jim Hagarty

I am a 72-year-old retired journalist, busy recovering from a lifelong career as an unretired journalist. This year marks a half century of my scratching out little fables about life. My interests include genealogy, humour and music. I live in a little blue shack in Canada and spend most of my time trying to stay out of trouble. I am not that good at it. I also spent years teaching journalism. Poor state of journalism today: My fault. I have a family I don't deserve, a dog that adores me, and two cars the junk yard refuses to accept. My prized possessions include my old guitar and a razor my Dad gave me when I was 14 and which I still use when I bother to shave. Oh, and my great-great-grandfather's blackthorn stick he brought from Ireland in the 1850s. I have only one opinion but it is a good one: People take too many showers.