Our BetterMost Community > Chez Tremblay
The Riverton post office
MaineWriter:
--- Quote from: latjoreme on May 02, 2006, 01:50:34 pm ---By the way, I have a good friend who is a postal carrier. According to her:
-- The PO would never just stamp DECEASED on a piece of mail and send it back. (Not sure if she's right on this -- she wasn't working for the postal service in 1983).
--- End quote ---
Yes, I have never seen the post office do this. Hospitals do, though.
Also, just because Jack is dead, the mail would still have delivered to Lureen, not returned to Ennis.
sparkle_motion:
--- Quote from: lnicoll on May 02, 2006, 02:01:07 pm ---
--- Quote from: latjoreme on May 02, 2006, 01:50:34 pm ---By the way, I have a good friend who is a postal carrier. According to her:
-- The PO would never just stamp DECEASED on a piece of mail and send it back. (Not sure if she's right on this -- she wasn't working for the postal service in 1983).
[/quote
Yes, I have never seen the post office do this. Hospitals do, though.
Also, just because Jack is dead, the mail would still have delivered to Lureen, not returned to Ennis.
--- End quote ---
At my job, we sometimes get returned mail and I have actually gotten a couple of pieces returned "deceased".
--- End quote ---
Phillip Dampier:
--- Quote from: latjoreme on May 02, 2006, 01:50:34 pm ----- The PO would never just stamp DECEASED on a piece of mail and send it back. (Not sure if she's right on this -- she wasn't working for the postal service in 1983).
--- End quote ---
I am surprised to read this. I have gotten back letters marked "recipient deceased - return to sender" before, but I honestly don't recall if that was someone at the residence handwriting it or if it was stamped that way by the post office.
I figured I'd look into this a little more and discovered some interesting things:
1) The individual postal carrier may mark "deceased" on an envelope and return it at their individual discretion, accounting for the sensitivity of the matter. Some only do this on business-related mail - never on an individual's card or letter. Others never do it at all for any reason. It is completely inappropriate for a postal employee to be in a situation of being the first notifier of someone's passing, so they do take care to avoid this from happening.
2) Unless Lureen and Jack were divorced, there would never have been a reason for the post office to return a card addressed to her husband, unless she specifically requested that mail addressed to him not be delivered (which would make her a cold-hearted bitch, perhaps). If a spouse passes away, their mail still arrives unless someone files a form with the post office to stop it.
3) I was somewhat surprised they bothered creating a fake facade for the Riverton PO, until you look closely at the crumbling current building. They did get the basic design of their fake PO correct - plain and boring. Of course, since they didn't film in Wyoming, I guess this isn't a big surprise.
4) Very few people bother sending postcards anymore (hell, if you're a kid at camp, you can just get on your Verizon or Sprint mobile and phone home), but they were commonly used 25+ years ago. In rural delivery areas, people often screwed up address information, so the carrier would read the postcard in order to figure out where it was supposed to go. Perhaps in rural areas, there still might be nosy mail carriers, but in most urban/suburban areas, no postal carrier has the time to spend sifting through other people's mail.
--- Quote ---Postal carriers DO read post cards (of course). Ennis and Jack were circumspect on their cards, but as I mentioned on another thread yesterday, if Ennis is going to get paranoid about someone seeing them talking in the driveway, why wouldn't he worry about this?
--- End quote ---
This and the reunion kiss were two things that always stuck out for me in the film. Putting any little details on a postcard in plain site of a spouse or family member is playing with fire, and Ennis must have been terribly dense never to clue in on Alma's growing suspicion. I'd expect him to have rented a PO box or at least tell Jack to send letters. :-X That, or just pick up the phone! Reach out and touch someone.
As for that reunion kiss, I know enough closeted or uncomfortable people you can't even get away with holding hands in public. A kiss like that would have never happened outdoors for them.
--- Quote ---But maybe those are just artistic-license issues.
--- End quote ---
I think so.
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Phillip on May 02, 2006, 02:24:44 pm ---In rural delivery areas, people often screwed up address information, so the carrier would read the postcard in order to figure out where it was supposed to go. Perhaps in rural areas, there still might be nosy mail carriers, but in most urban/suburban areas, no postal carrier has the time to spend sifting through other people's mail.
As for that reunion kiss, I know enough closeted or uncomfortable people you can't even get away with holding hands in public. A kiss like that would have never happened outdoors for them.
--- End quote ---
Thanks for doing that research, Phillip! For the record, my friend, who works in a suburban post office, says she HAS read post cards (and magazines and catalogues!). Probably not all of them, though. She does keep pretty busy.
Re the reunion kiss, to me the very fact that it DID happen outdoors and that Ennis initiated it (after carefully checking around, of course) says a lot about how overwhelmed he was by emotion at that moment. It WAS more reckless than you'd expect from him. Maybe if it hadn't been four years, he would have been more careful. Though even he admits that he doesn't trust himself to control what happens when this thing grabs hold of them.
nakymaton:
--- Quote from: latjoreme on May 02, 2006, 03:03:00 pm ---
It WAS more reckless than you'd expect from him.
--- End quote ---
I think that's part of what scares Ennis so much. I mean, yes, he's scared of what other people will see and think, and he's scarred by what his father forced him to see as a child. But I think Ennis is scared of his own inability to control his passion.
And of course, that's one of the things that's so wonderful about that scene -- to see Ennis lose control in a good way. And to see Jack's reaction... Jack's quite a dreamer, but how often do Jack's dreams actually come true?
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