Anyone else have Packages Stranded across the country ???

A very fitting comparison --- and performed by the MAN himself.

My extremely frugal (tighter than stripes on a watermelon) father turned loose of enough of his moldy money to have the original album release of that --- SUN Records, if I remember correctly.

The only musicians I ever knew of him buying their albums were Johnny Cash, Doc Watson, and Mississippi John Hurt.

He saw Mississippi John Hurt live in Springfield, Missouri, when he was stationed at Fort Leonardwood, and bought an album at that performance.

He had all of the original Johnny Cash albums - the good ones.

He saw Doc Watson (and Merle) live and came home with a dozen or more albums.

He would come in late at night, filthy and greasy from the filling station, pour a tall glass half full of Coke and top it off with Maker's Mark, sit down with his guitar in an old ladderback chair next to the old record player (as much as he loved his albums, he was too stingy to invest in a decent stereo to play them on), put on a Doc Watson album, and play the same line over and over, picking up the needle and putting it back, and following along with his old beat-up and war weary KAY, until it would be hard for an expert to tell whether it was him or Doc.

That old KAY survived Basic Training in Fort Knox, Fort Leonardwood, Fort Chaffe, Fort Lewis, Korea and Japan, and countless liquored-up soldiers, jealous husbands, and angry women, and will still make music today.

The further into the Maker's Mark he got, the better he got; Southbound - Salt Creek - Bill Cheatham - Billy in the Low Ground ; he could burn them up.

He ran a big screw-driver plumb through the palm of his hand and was thumping on the old guitar before the bandages and stitches came out.

Mashed his hand and thumb and three fingers so badly that the nails came off, and never slowed down a bit.

He could have walked onto the stage and played with the best of them, and the only people that ever heard him play were his family and the hard-drinking bunch that gathered in the filling station after hours and made music way into the night.

Agree with Clive.

More USPS drama.....

I ordered a book from an EBay vendor; the book/vendor is in Louisville, Kentucky; I live in Kentucky and it is 130 miles from my back door to the Kennedy bridge.

Reasonably soon, the vendor marked my book as being shipped.

A couple days later, USPS shows it as being "accepted" at Lexington, KY; no mention whatsoever of Louisville.

One hour and fifteen minutes later, tracking shows it as arriving at "origin facility" in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; I don't believe a guided missile could have gotten it from Lexington to Pittsburgh in an hour and fifteen minutes; however, I then received an email from EBay informing me that I had a new expected delivery date ... days later than originally estimated.

According to tracking, it languished in Pittsburgh for a couple days; and then, it shows up in Atlanta, Georgia.

I get another email, this one telling me my package will arrive later than expected, but with no estimated day of delivery.

According to tracking, my book is still in Atlanta and I cannot now remember why I even wanted it.

This kind of erratic and senseless behavior by the USPS is why so many vendors have resorted to the very vague generic "tracking" they now use, instead of the accurate time-and-place tracking of a few years ago.

Back when I was a kid, there were no computers, no electronic sorting devices, no regional clearing houses, no such thing as emails, text messages, and faxes; people wrote and mailed letters to correspond and take care of business.

There was no electronic banking, no automatic withdrawals; bills were sent through the mail and checks (and cash) were put in an envelope and dropped in the mailbox.

Everybody got a big thick newspaper and half-a-dozen magazines every day.

The shear volume of postal business forty years ago had to be fifty times that of today; yet, they hardly ever made a mistake and letters and packages got to their destination quicker and without big black tire tread tracks on them.

Right up until the mid-1990s, our local post office had three slots in the wall; a slot for all local mail, a special designated slot for all mail going to the neighboring town, and a slot for "out of town"; now, there is only a single slot, regardless of where it is going.

There also was a postage stamp machine, accessible 24-hours daily, right between two writing tables complete with quality ink-pens on ball-chains; all of that has been gone for thirty years and if you need a stamp, you're out of luck.

It is 175-miles from my front porch to Knoxville, Tennessee.
If I send a letter to my next-door neighbor, it will go to Knoxville to be sorted and postmarked.

If I have some time-sensitive government bill that must be paid and postmarked by midnight on a given day, I have to allow for the trip to Knoxville and mail it a couple days earlier; as, sometimes, our mail may sit in the parking lot for a couple days before they even unload the truck.

Our local office has not had a postmark stamp, nor the ability to postmark letters, in over thirty years.

You have to love progress.

I expect things this Christmas to be even worse than last year.

That's a sad statement about mail service BuckSkin  Quite pathetic. None of it is logical...just makes no sense. 

I live in a small town close to a small city and about 3 hours away from the nearest Amazon distribution center. I ordered a new BBQ brush at 9 AM on Saturday (July 17) and it was delivered at noon on Sunday to my house. Sometimes deliveries are amazing.