Somebody owes me 20 cents. Either the US Post Office or Yarnell's Ice Cream.

Hubby got a notice in our mailbox that said he had a letter that had to be picked up at the postal service center on Race Street in Searcy.

20 cents postage was due.

Who would send us a letter lacking 20 cents postage? Who? Who? Who? Could it be important?

Well, Hubby directed me to pick it up during my day while he was busy on the golf course.

That service center looks like an arsenal with nothing but a peep hole for the workers to see out and you have to ring a bell for service and they want identification. Geesh....

But I got the item, paid the 20 cents. It was nothing but a folded sheet of paper secured with a staple and it was from Yarnell's Ice Cream bankruptcy court with a notice of a hearing which hubby could attend.

I said to the lady, "It has 44 cents postage on it. Why do we owe 20 cents more?"

Her reply was that they had stapled it together and the staple kept them from putting it through the usual mail processing and it had to be hand processed.....thus it required 64 cents postage. She also said that if the mail had had a return address they would have returned it to the sender.

SOOOO......who messed it up? Yarnell's? Yes. But they probably didn't know that a staple could cost more and they didn't think a return address was needed.

The United States Post Office? Yes. They made me call on them to pick up what was almost junk mail. I made a remark to her, hopefully in a nice way, that this was one of the reasons the Postal Service is going broke. They could have left us the mail as easily as they could have left the pick-up note.

Moral to this story?? Don't secure mail with a staple and put your return address on it!

I collected my 20 cents from Hubby so all is well!