Whenever one of my friends or myself travels, we love to send each other postcards. Thus, I thought it would be appropriate to visit the National Postal Museum, near Union Station. The first thing that I saw upon walking into the museum was a display of some of the vehicles that have been used to deliver the mail throughout U.S. history. A life-sized coach from the 1800's was on display along with a plane and numerous versions of the cars that have been used to deliver mail. Did you know that the U.S. Postal service had the first largest collection of cars used by a company in the 1920's? In addition, many of the postal cars were painted green after WWI because the army donated their leftover green paint from the war.
Visitors to the museum are encouraged to have a hands-on experience. All guests are offered the opportunity to begin their own stamp collection with stamps from around the world. I started my own collection!
Finally, I learned that our postal system has an unofficial mascot: a dog named Owney. He was discovered in 1888 outside of a New York Post Office and ended up touring the world. Postal masters gave Owney a medal for each place he visited. When he reached old age, Owney bit a mail carrier on the hand, starting the dog-post master enemy legend that continues today. However, Owney is still loved by the postal system and his stuff body is currently on display in the postal museum. - K.F.
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