(William Freddie McCullough)
Thinking Davis would like it, I cut it out, stuck it in an envelope, and mailed it to him at SUNY Maritime College. A week went by. I spoke to Davis by phone a few times; he never mentioned the obituary. After two weeks, I asked, "Have you gotten a letter from me?"
"No," he replied. "Nothing."
Later I learned that JoJo and Pop Pop had sent him a check. But that hadn't arrived either. Neither had the letter from Hugh and BB. I cursed the mail room at the college. Then I printed the online version of the obituary and sent it to his roommate's house in Yonkers. Fortunately, the Dronzek family is always willing to oblige where Davis's mail is concerned, so a couple months later when Davis asked me to mail some important documents to him, I decided to forego SUNY's mail room and instead send right to Yonkers. The envelope arrived in a couple of days.
After the holidays, though, I started thinking: Somebody must be getting mail at the maritime college. Are some administrators privileged over the cadets? What if I mailed a package to the provost at the same time I mailed one to Davis? Who would get his package first? My money was on the provost.
So I baked cookies. Dozens of them. Cookie palooza. I also baked some drunk blondies to boot.
Fortunately, Davis had given me a Foodsaver® for Christmas, so I sealed all my baked goods in freshness for a trip via the U.S. Postal Service to the Big Apple. Then I learned how much it cost to send cookies to New York, and I took the provost out of the experiment. I don't even know the provost. I'm certainly not going to spend that much money to ship him some chocolate chip oatmeal treats. Because my fresh-sealed snacks wouldn't fit in the post office's flat rate boxes, so I had to resort to shoe boxes for the experiment. And then I ran out of those. So one package got shipped in a raisin bran box.
Four boxes in all traveled to the Empire State:
- One for Davis and David, mailed to the Dronzek house in Yonkers
- One for Jill, David's girlfriend, who lives in the neighboring community
- One for Conner Deaton, Davis's friend from Savannah, also at SUNY Maritime
- And one for Matt Cannon, another third class cadet at the college (He got the raisin bran box)
(Davis, Conner, Matt) (Jill and David)
Inside each package was a note explaining my experiment. I provided my email address, Facebook page, and phone number for texting. I asked each recipient to alert me when his/her package arrived. All packages arrived on the same day, but I heard from the recipients in stages: first Jill, then Matt. Davis called me for another reason, so I asked him about the package. That's when he said the package was in Yonkers and he would go get it that weekend. Later I heard from Conner.
Everyone said the cookies arrived intact and they were delicious. So what had happened to all of that previous mail? Why could a box of cookies show up, but not a simple envelope? I scratched my head, then had to get on with my life.
Meanwhile, the boys across the hall from Davis and David expressed a little cookie envy. Off went a package to them. I'm told the box now hangs on the wall of their room in homage. That makes me so happy. (More cookies are going out to them this week).
Ultimately I decided that if mail is to be delivered at the SUNY Maritime College, it had to be in a box. Envelopes, somehow, disappeared.
Or did they?
Two nights ago we got a phone call from Davis. "Guess what?" he said. "I found my mail box. They'd moved it from last year, and I didn't know that."
We were talking via Skype. He held up an envelope. "Here's the obituary you sent me back in September. Here's the check from JoJo and Pop Pop. And here's the letter from BB."
So mystery solved. Envelopes do go to SUNY Maritime. Where at SUNY Maritime, it seems, is still up for debate, but our mail does arrive there. I think, though, just for good measure, I'm going to hold onto the Dronzeks' home address.
