My father's last case was the one that the authorities wanted kept quiet the most. The last one before he disappeared in 1959.
Kingstown Falls.
I received a letter in '82 to travel to Beaver County and interview the retired Post Master from Beaver Falls. The letter stated he would have an interesting story to tell. The letter was held by Western Union. (Yeah, like Back To The Future II!) It was delivered by instruction. Why after 22 years? Why 1982?
I have no idea who the letter was from. It was stamped from Boston, Mass. 1960. I was intrigued to say the least. I would be a fool to let it slip me by. After all, I am Charles Edsel's son.
Was the letter from my pops and would it have any clues to his whereabouts?
And so the mystery begins...
I travelled to Beaver Falls. I met up with the retired Post Master. He told me he worked and went on to manage the Post Office in Beaver Falls from 1961 to 1990. The Post Office was the largest in Beaver County. It looked after and sorted mail for 30 boroughs and 22 townships.
"I was an "Off-comer". I got transferred from Pinebox, Texas in the winter of '61.
My reception was as frosty as the Pennsylvania winter. It was a real struggle to get accepted by the locals. But the gossip and hostilities was more bearable than the Texas heat. I started on the counters. I enjoyed my work. I liked Beaver Falls. And I wanted to manage to the place. And eventually I would."
He would take a draw on his pipe and continue..
"The Post Office and Sorting Office was kept separate. The post from the counters would be collected by the Sorting Manager or the sorters during the course of the working day. Two or three times a day as it was before the time before e-mails and text messages.
The smallest letters would slip into the tubes we had fitted in '65 and zip off downstairs. The largest post bags were as heavy as coal and placed on carts, the carts would travel the corridor to the chutes and down to the sorting office below. We called it "The Basement" or to new starters, "The Dungeon".
The mail would then be sorted by the postmen and sorters into "area pigeon-holes" and be delivered by Postal Van or on foot.
When I became manager in 1970 I had greater communication with the sorting office. My duties increased and amongst other things, I was to sort the "dead mail". The mail that cannot be delivered for various reasons. No stamps or payment on letters. Incorrect addresses. Recipient Gone Away. (RGA)."
The retired manager took a long look at me and started his tale again.
"A lot of mail would arrive for Kingstown Falls, Beaver County.
And it would never get delivered.
People had heard of it. Or didn't want to talk about it. Or they didn't know where it was. Or they did know where it was but it was "Not in this County!" they would say.
The place didn't exist so the "dead mail" would be collected by the Postmaster General's Office and it would go to the Mail Recovery Center in Atlanta, Georgia or Saint Paul, Minnesota."
"And every six month a guy, dressed in a suit and shades, (he was more like a Fed than a postal worker) would arrive in a black sedan with government plates. He would take the dead mail for Kingstown Falls and leave without a please nor fuck you."
"Over the years I started to lose patience with the "Fed". If he had been nice and polite I wouldn't have cared a jot. But this guy's attitude needled me over the years. I mean who did he think he was. This big city hotshot coming over to my Post Office, with his fancy suit and shades.
So I started to "collect" or keep back the mail addressed to Kingstown Falls. Oh, I used to give him the bags labelled "Dead Mail". But it wasn't all of the dead mail.
That first six months I collected a lot of mail for the city of Kingstown Falls. I put it all in a box that I kept in my office. And when I filled the box, I decided to take to "The Dungeon" and keep it safe with all the antique equipment in the sorting office.
The sorting office had seen a lot of changes over the years. As the county grew bigger with the population increasing in the townships. The sorting office changed with it. Some parts of the basement became redundant as old equipment was replaced by smaller more efficient equipment. The stuff we didn't use was kept in storage. Eventually storerooms and offices were closed. It was amazing some of the old gear you could find if you looked hard enough.
And I was looking hard for a hiding place for my box of dead mail for Kingstown Falls. I had all the keys for the place. Some keys I had never been used. But one particular key had a use and it had never been used for a long time.
I discovered that the Post Office, back in 1856 was the United States Customs House, Post Office and Fireproof Storage Company Warehouse. An abundance of vaults and rooms were forgotten about and closed.
This is a side track we won't involve ourselves with at present.
What we will concern ourselves with, is the locked and abandoned sorting room for the city of Kingstown Falls.
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