ZIP is short for Zone Improvement Plan. The lowest ZIP code is in New England (02107), the highst in Ketchikan, Alaska (99950).

The first digit represents a group of states, the next two an area within that group, next two a specific region.

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Use of ZIP codes were voluntary when introduced in 1963. Of course, postal services would prefer mailers use the codes making their job easier, enabling them to leave early.

It did, sadly, turn out that Mr. Doe of the sixties had no intentions of letting Mr. Postman leave early. “I got too many o’ digits runnin’ round my head”, he said over and over again. And he was not a lying man, Mr. Doe.

Economy coming around these years, things needed efficiency. Numbers, impersonal numbers, were introduced to describe most anything from people to pets, and, god forbid it, postal districts.

In came Mr. Zip. A good example of the past’s tendency to let family members of the board draw logos and commercials, if not naming products, mr. Zip is indeed a badly drawn boy. He did, nonetheless, prepare and teach the mailing population of America to use zip codes. That was a good thing since the codes were made mandatory in 1967.

His message was not only Use ZIP codes, though. He also had the pleasure of educating Americans to “Mail early in the day”.

Where am I going with all this? Fact is I don’t know. Maybe its a product of early-fall cold with the flu look-n-feel all spiced up with fever and the gruesome task of sleeping two-digit hours.
oid837

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