We’ve all been the victims of delayed mail, but most people don’t hold a candle to Brittany Keech (pictured). When the Michigan woman checked her mail box recently, it was flooded with the usual junk mail. Atop the pile of miscellaneous fliers and bills sat something that caught her eye: a tattered and timeworn postcard. At first, she didn’t think much of it, but then she took a closer look. Upon further inspection, she spotted a faded one-cent George Washington stamp……..postmarked Oct. 29, 1920. The 30-year-old was shocked. On the front of the postcard was a Halloween illustration, including a black cat, pumpkins, a witch, an owl, and a broomstick, with a play on words: “Witch would you rather be……a goose or a pumpkin-head?” The card was addressed to a Mrs. Roy McQueen. It wasn’t long before Keech figured out that the postcard was from one family member to another. It started out: “Dear Cousins. We are quite well, but mother has awful lame knees. It is awful cold here.” The note ends with: “Don’t forget to write us,” followed by a question about whether Roy got his pants fixed yet. Keech decided she would try to reunite the long-lost postcard with the family to whom it was originally intended. She started by posting it on Facebook, which caused Robby Peters, who works at the Grand Rapids Public Library, to begin digging for answers. While sifting through a 1920 census, Peters discovered a Roy McQueen who once lived at the same address where Keech now lives, but he could find no indication of where he had moved. Meanwhile, Mindy Ponover, who works for the Postal Service in Michigan, explained that it’s likely the postcard got struck behind a baseboard, in a crack in the floor, or underneath a piece of machinery. Despite all the searching that’s been done, Keech has been unable to get the postcard to its rightful owners, which presents another problem: We may never know if Roy did, in fact, get his pants fixed.
