DATE: Saturday, August 16, 1997             TAG: 9708160017

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B9   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: OPINION 

SOURCE: KERRY DOUGHERTY

                                            LENGTH:   76 lines

LETTERS, LETTERS, LETTERS LET'S HEAR IT FOR THE U.S. POSTAL SERVICE

Earlier this summer I was talking with a friend whose daughter, like mine, was away at camp.

She boasted that she was able to send daily faxes to her girl, and the camp staff delivered them directly to her daughter's bunk. Her daughter, forbidden to phone, was able to fax right back.

I didn't envy her this touch of modernity. I'm a postage-stamp kid. I live for mail.

There's something about holding a real letter in your hands, an object that days earlier was in the hands of the sender, who licked the envelope and scrawled your name on the front. It's that personal connection that keeps me from throwing most letters away. Ever.

I don't feel the same enthusiasm toward faxes.

Fortunately, my daughter's camp was primitive. Mail was the only way we could communicate for the better part of one month.

I now have a little bundle of camp letters to remember those weeks by. They're in my daughter's own hand, with her weird 8-year-old spelling and bits of detritus from camp at the bottom of each envelope. I'll treasure them all my life. She has a much fatter pile of letters from me, which she may or may not save.

Like other avid letter writers, my desk and drawers, closets and files - at my home and my parents' - are filled with letters dating back to my childhood pen pals. Most of those are light as a feather, written on air-mail paper and mailed in red, white and blue air envelopes. Better yet are those blue folded-up air letters. A letter and envelope all in one. You had to be very careful opening those with a kitchen knife.

Among my old letters are dozens and dozens from Joseph Peter Chisdu Segum Keshi, an Ibo tribesman and student at the University of Ibadan when last I heard from him. He disappeared in the early '70s during the Nigerian civil war. We had written to each other weekly from the time we were 10. I still reread his letters and wonder if he escaped with his life.

Shirley Green's letters are in a drawer at my parents' house. She was a Protestant girl in Belfast with whom I faithfully corresponded for years. My favorite letters were from a girl named Maria Pia Formigoni, who lived in Milan and wrote flawless English. She had a silly sense of humor and would translate Italian jokes into English for me. In return, I'd send her riddles to amuse her Milanese classmates.

I could still write to Pia if I had her address and it would cost me just 60 cents.

That's right, the U.S. Postal Service will take our half-ounce letters and deliver them to Italy or Nigeria or Nepal for a pittance.

What a deal. What a bargain.

I love the U.S. Postal Service. The people there get so little respect, and they make the news only when one of their number goes berserk and starts shooting.

So I was heartened this week listening to a radio report on the UPS strike. A spokesperson for Land's End reported that the mail-order company had switched to the U.S. Postal Service to send its packages. She - and the radio interviewer - seemed stunned that Land's End's customers reported receiving their parcels by mail in 3-4 days. Every bit as fast as UPS.

It's clear these guys don't use the Postal Service much.

If anything good is to come out of this UPS work stoppage, maybe it will be a new respect for American mail service.

I'm frankly amused by those who believe that anything government can do, a private company can do better. If first-class mail were handed over to private corporations (as some have suggested in the past), it wouldn't be long before a letter to Almo, Idaho, would cost about $3 instead of 32 cents. Count on it.

But the Postal Service delivers first-class mail to every corner of the United States for the same low price. That may not seem like a bargain when you're posting your phone bill to Richmond, but it's a godsend when you want to send a love letter to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska.

Back in July, my daughter was thrilled when her second-grade teacher wrote to her from Maine and sprinkled some New England sand in the envelope.

Try that with a fax machine. MEMO: Ms. Dougherty is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot.

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