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Mollie McWilliams
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The inadvertent time capsule with a working door bell.
This weekend we opened our mailbox — 55 years since the prior tenants had locked it up one last time. You may be wondering how did this happen, how do people just not open their mailbox? At some point, we now assume about 55 years ago, they added a mail slot to the bottom of the front door, then locked and painted over the mailbox, directing USPS to use the door. But not everyone got that memo right away — specifically, Bud Graham the electrician, home cleaning services business-owner Sue Vera Tinkler, Ethel (friend of the former tenant), a "southern born spiritualist" Miss Jackson, and the
1959 San Francisco mayoral candidate Russell L. Wolden and 1959
supervisor candidate John Abraham. But before we get to the mail, let's start with the fact people have been walking by a mailbox for 55 years without noticing there was something in it. (Yours truly included.)
This Saturday, as we were saying goodbye to our mom, the send-off at the front door turned into a lengthy conversation (as that tends to happen with moms), and we started fiddling with the mail slot. Noticing our lack of concentration on the subject at hand she directed her gaze to the mailbox and said, "Hey, there's something in there." Our gaze went down the mailbox to the small, decorative holes near the bottom of the box, and lo-and-behold, there was an envelope pushed up against the inside of the box. We then went to work with our MacGyver tools — a hanger, a paperclip and two paint brushes — and shimmied the mail up and out the original slot it had been stuffed into (as the paperclip key didn't work).
And this is what we found:
