Re:
>> We often forget that we have the best and cheapest postal service in
>> the world.  (Granted, Chicago is a big exception.)  ...
As responded to by:
>Getting old and becoming a curmudgeon *

Another anecdote speaking well not so much of our postal service as our
confidence in it.

After speaking in Australia in 1984 about Ellis Island, the restoration of
which I managed architects and engineers, I received a letter from Sydney
simply addressed to:  Jim Rhodes...Statue of Liberty.  Through clever
perception on Liberty Island, I got it.

Another story not particularly related to anything but overstatement,
remember the joke of the three pizza shops on one block in New York.  The
first pizza shop had a sign in the window: BEST PIZZA IN THE WORLD!  There
were two people inside.  The second pizza shop had a sign in the window:
BEST PIZZA IN THE UNIVERSE!!  There were three people inside.  The third
pizza shop had a line of people halfway down the street and a sign in the
window:  BEST PIZZA ON THE BLOCK.

Botta-boom! --Jim