E-mail Is Yesterday’s V-Mail

I’ve decided if I ever write my autobiography that I would title it, “From V-Mail to E-Mail.” Actually that would not be correct since I was here a while before V-Mail, and I expect that E-Mail will be here long after I am gone.

Thinking about all the changes that have occurred during that time frame is difficult to comprehend. Who would ever have thought we would have cellular phones today that take pictures, and that people can use to play games?

Understanding V-Mail is likely as foreign to the younger generation as E-Mail is to some of us in our senior years. V-Mail was a form of correspondence using stationery that could be purchased at the five and ten cent stores or at the post office. Both the military and the civilian population used this type of letters, which took much less time to deliver.

The sheets of paper were very thin and it has been reported that 1,700 V-Mail letters could fit into a cigarette packet.

Often times a section of the letters would be cut out, or possibly blacked out. Anything that might breach security was eliminated.

Surely I was born in the wrong generation, because I can still remember the three-cent stamp and a penny postcard. In Dallas we received two home deliveries of mail five days a week. On Saturdays, the mailman came once a day, and of course, no delivery on Sundays.

My niece recently sent me a copy of the schedule of price increases in mail delivery effective May 11. A regular stamp for mailing a letter will increase to 44 cents.

We have been reading and hearing of many newspapers that have discontinued publication due to rising expenses. My brother had a paper route in Dallas while he was in school. He delivered The Times Herald, which was the afternoon paper, while The Dallas Morning News was delivered in the morning.

Some years ago, The Times Herald discontinued publication. During the time my brother was a “paper boy”, the weekly cost of delivery was fifteen cents per week, or 65 cents a month.

Commenting on the increase of postage rates, my brother said he had been paying $57 per three months for The Dallas Morning News, but when he received his new bill last week, the price had increased to $90 per month.

In high school, newspapers were provided for us to read in our journalism class. We were expected to comment on the style and content of these papers. That is when I learned to appreciate the editorial columns and enjoy the views of the various authors. Before that, I only read the comic section.

Sometimes it seems that we are drowning in news on television, but news from different sources and different reporters is likely to give us a more balanced view at what is reported.

I suppose too many of us take our postal service and the newspapers for granted and assume they will always be available. In the past few years, I have come to believe the saying, “The pen is mightier than the sword.”

4-22-2009
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