My Unabomber-Scorched Postcard, a Philatelic Tale
By Terry Paiste
May 1998
Special to the Washington Post
In 1979, “Earplay” in Minneapolis sent me a postcard acknowledging receipt of my first play.
But the postcard was singed around the edges, as if it had been the guest of honor at a weenie roast. Was this their way of telling me my script had been consigned to a bonfire?
Not so. The accompanying letter from the postal inspector explained my mail had survived an explosion aboard an aircraft.
My husband immediately snatched have up the postcard, letter, and plastic container it had arrived in. (He’s a philatelist. They do odd things like that.)
Gary also cut out newspaper stories about the suspected terrorist bombing. Fortunately, there were no serious injuries. “You can never tell,” he said, ” flashing scissors happily. “Your cover may be valuable some day.”
I knew from all those years of being dragged to stamp show dinners that a cover was any piece of stamped mail.
But valuable? It was possible, I supposed. It was also possible that my one-act play might be turned into a smash Broadway musical, but I wasn’t expecting a phone call from Hal Prince anytime soon.
Fast forward 19 years. Not having heard yet from Prince, I was sitting at the kitchen table, addressing envelopes to theaters around the country, telling them about my most recent play, “A Penny’s Worth of Murder.” (The mystery centers around the Penny Black, the first adhesive stamp. Hey, I had to get something out of being married to a philatelist.) So I wasn’t thrilled to be interrupted by Gary bursting in with a copy of his latest issue of “Linn’s Stamp News.”
“Look at the headline!” he ordered. “They’re writing about a cover like yours!”
I didn’t have to ask which cover. When you own only one, it’s easy to tell them apart.
“New Unabomber cover surfaces from flight that ended in a smoky emergency landing” read the headline. I scanned the article quickly, learning that the bomb was planted 19 years ago by Ted Kaczynski.”
“This is interesting,” I admitted.”Especially where it says the Unabomber used the $1 Eugene O’Neill postage stamp on his bombs. Do you suppose this means he had some creepy admiration for O’Neill’s plays?”
“No,” Gary said patiently. “It means your cover is rare. Very rare.”
Plays forgotten, I immediately adopted my new persona as a stamp collector, possessor of a very rare cover. I tried to compose my features into the same studious expression Gary wears when examining a stamp. After a suitable pause I asked what I considered the reasonable, the appropriate, the philatellically sophisticated question.
“HOW MUCH IS IT WORTH?”
“Maybe something,” Gary replied. “Maybe nothing. Depends on who wants it. Time will tell.”
“I don’t want time to tell me. I want you to tell me. Now. HOW MUCH IS IT WORTH?”
He backed down. “I’ll ask around.”
He did. And he was right the first time. Maybe something. Maybe nothing. Time will tell.
In the meantime, Kaczynski is sitting in a prison cell. Gary is in his study reading articles about you-know-what. And I’m back at the kitchen table, addressing do to theaters. We’re all where we belong.
But now, I pay more attention to the stamps I stick on those envelopes. You never know when you might discover a valuable error.
We philatelists do odd things like that.