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United States/Covers & Postmarks : Road Trip Dos

 

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BenFranklin1902
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Tom in Exton, PA

07 May 2017
04:40:43pm

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Well I did it again! Another NJ postmark road rally! My wife had made a date with two of her friends to "go into the city". In New Jersey, "into the city" means New York City. Unlike where I currently live in Pennsylvania, where it means Philadelphia. Only those of us used to New York City cannot fathom Philly being taken seriously as a city. Someone from Pennsylvania was confused and asked me why "into the city" doesn't mean Newark, Trenton or Camden, NJ... well, because nobody ever goes there intentionally!

Anyway, we drove to New Jersey on Friday evening and stayed over with friends in Jackson, NJ. The girls left early for a choo choo ride, lunch and a show. That left me on my own for the day. And what's more perfect than a postal run?

This being a Saturday with short post office hours, and knowing I'd have to have a social breakfast in the morning before I could take off, I set up an abbreviated session. My goal was six post offices. So here we go...

Image Not Found


I've mentioned before my surprise at some of the easy towns that are missing from my collection. Since we have friends living in Jackson and we go there all the friggin time, I thought it was ironic that I didn't have a postmark.

The husband of my wife's friend had said he'd go to the post office one day and bring me a cancel, but I'm sure that promise was forgotten as soon as it was made. Knowing that this would be my first stop... and I actually even knew where the building was, I set out around 9:00am for the day.

I even created a cachet for Jackson as a sample. I posted this on the board on Friday but didn't get any comments, so here it is. The cachet is the state of NJ outline with Ocean County highlighted. Those with a memory (at least a better memory than my friend!) will recall that this is the piece I use for my album pages mastheads.

This was the first office of the day where a clerk balked at giving me my cancel. I was hoping that the cachet on the cover would neutralize some of the hesitation clerks had on the blank envelope since now the cover actually looks philatelic. Fortunately this is a good size office, so the clerk deferred the decision to her supervisor who met me at a side door.

He looked at the cover and without hesitation said okay. He took it over to a table I could see from the door and gave it the first unreadable WOMP! He asked me if that was okay and I asked him if he could do a second cancel on the white paper so I could read the town clearly. No problem. He even showed some interest asking me where I got the envelope. I let him know I ran it off my printer. That whole transaction took about 15 minutes.

Image Not Found

I decided to investigate the Holiday City branch of the Toms River post office. This was intriguing to because it didn't show up in any of my books, so it certainly was a new post office in this century. There are a huge number of retirement communities in the Toms River and Bricktown areas, and the original one was Holiday City. Picture thousands of little Monopoly houses, yea the little red ones! I wanted to see exactly where they had put a post office.

Image Not Found
HOLIDAY CITY - Yea, Really!

This was going to be a distance marathon because in this area of New Jersey the post offices and towns are a distance apart.. at least the post marks I needed were. So I set out from Jackson for the 15 mile / 27 minute ride. I navigated by the Waze program on my phone. Waze is pretty cool because it's live and crowd sourced.. that means that people are reporting road hazards, traffic jams, accidents and even cop locations along your route. It's also pretty intuitive so you can voice command, "Holiday City Post Office" and it will take you there. Of course I check the address against my pre-trip research to make sure.

I also set up Waze to avoid toll roads and major highways. That gave me a neat trip along scenic county roads. Most of my travels took me through farm country. For those of you who think of New Jersey as smoke stacks and Newark, you'd be amazed at how much open space there really is!

I get to Holiday City and was surprised to go inside the community gates. I thought for sure it was in a building right off the property. But no, I drove down the road of those little ranch houses and came across a small mall. Inside there were a few local stores, a few places to eat and a very small narrow post office.

The clerk was an older man and I asked him if indeed there was a Holiday City postmark. He agreed that there was. He questioned his authority to cancel my cover for me, so I pulled out my all important USPS regulation. He saw the logo at the top of the page and didn't even look at it. He said, "So you have the all important rules!" and gave me a very nice readable cancel that just clipped the corner of the stamp. Score! At this point it's a little after 10am and I have two covers.

I set out for Clarksburg, which is in Millstone Township in Monmouth County farm country. This is another 20 minutes and half hour away, a nice trip on back roads. The Clarksburg post office is located on Stage Coach Road, which no doubt was the travel route in the good ole days. This became the first bump in the road on our trip.

The postal clerk wouldn't cooperate with my request for a cancel. She refused to look at my regulation saying "they don't do that no more" and saying my regulation must be old. I tell her the copy I have from the USPS website is dated December 2016, and I'm willing to bring up the page on my phone. No, she tells me the USPS website is wrong and she knows the rules! Um, okay.

She tells me the only legal way to get a postmark is for a letter to go through the mails. So I address my cover, put a piece of paper inside to give it some rigidity and hand it to her. She put a decent cancel on it, showed it to me and put it in the outgoing mail bin behind her. Hopefully we'll get a decent cancel back in the mail. I leave here 10:45 without a cover in hand.

Image Not Found

Undaunted, I set my GPS for Perrineville, which also is in Millstone Township. This time we have a 2.5 mile / 5 minute trip. This post office is in a little worn out shopping center. It's manned by a very nice older lady. She was pleasant and wanted to help me. She said to give her a minute she wanted to check with her supervisor. She picked up the phone and instantly was connected with someone. She didn't understand that I wanted to cancel the stamp without mailing it anywhere. Her superior agreed this was okay, I was involved in the conversation because she kept asking me questions to relay to him. I asked if he was the supervisor for the Clarksburg post office. Yes he was! I asked for the phone and let him know the road block I encountered there. He said he'd have a conversation with the lady.

Image Not Found

I look for my next stop, New Lisbon,NJ and realize that I will be driving straight through New Egypt. I look at my laptop where I have all my cover images and cannot find a cover. My spread sheet shows I have a cover. Strange. I figure since I'm here I might as well make the stop. New Egypt was a quaint little town, although the post office is the typical 1960s light brick look. It had no off street parking and everyone seemed to park on the side street.

The clerk was a young attractive Indian girl. I presented my cover and asked nicely for a cancel. She reached under the counter and pulled out a huge cancel device! She tried it twice on paper to make sure it was working and carefully gave me the best cancel of the day! I was sure happy I stopped there! And yes it's on one of the cachets I printed on Friday.

I did figure out the mystery of the coordination between my spread sheet and photo library... I have a 1910 cover from New Egypt that I had received recently and hadn't been logged in yet. So I'll keep both covers in the collection.

This was now around 11:40 and I saw that the New Lisbon post office closed at 12. Waze calculates that I will get there around 12:05 so I abandon that one. The only miss of the trip! But I did get New Egypt so I have the intended count, just a different post office.

Image Not Found

I see that Browns Mills is about the same distance but is open until 2pm. I set my sights on this location instead. It's 12 miles and 20 minutes, but now I'm in no hurry. I see a longer route will include "Mount Misery Road" and I decide that I cannot pass this one up! It sounds like the road to Hell, but it pretty much was a rural country road with a lot of trees. I don't think I could buy a house on Mount Misery Road. Just not the Karma I'm looking for!

Image Not Found

I reach Browns Mills and the post office is actually brown! It was a low wood sided building, down a side street. You'd never find it just driving around town. The clerk there gave me my cancellation without hesitation and with a smile. That became the perfect end to the day. It was a bit after 1pm and I had completed my mission.. well almost!

I decided to take Route 206 up north on my way back in hope of finding an interesting place to grab some lunch. That led me to Route 130 and as I headed up through Hamilton Township suddenly I see a huge post office on the opposite side of the divided highway. It's teeming with activity so it got my curiosity. I pull up my current location and find I'm at the Hamilton Post Office and it's open until 3pm. Wow! Hamilton is again one of those offices that should be common and I'm surprised I don't have in my collection. That became even more evident for me when I recently acquired a 1931 Hamilton Square, NJ cover. So of course I stop.

What's interesting is that the building has "United States Post Office" on both the building facade, the sign out on the highway and even lettered on the doors. But nowhere does it give the town name! I get on the long line for counter service. I ask a lady on line what town I'm in, and she agrees we are indeed in Hamilton. There are two clerks working the line and it's going quickly. I reach a clerk, present my cover and she cancels it nicely immediately. I look at it and the postmark reads "Trenton, NJ"! I ask the clerk if indeed I'm at the Hamilton post office since I'm nowhere near Trenton... she says well yes, but everything is cancelled Trenton... no branch indication, nothing! As if I'm downtown Trenton! Interesting.

So that was Saturday. Feel good about this trip. It was fun and I got to see some areas of the state I hadn't seen before. I knew the challenges I'd face so I was better prepared. One thing I learned this day, was to have a sample cover with a nice corner cancel to show the clerk. "Please cancel it like this one." got good results. As always I kept my cool and was very friendly. When confronted by hesitant clerks, I usually start out with "I know you are trying to do your job, so here's the regulation that says it's okay." Then I'd place a few covers I had canceled the same day on the counter. That seemed to help a lot.

So now I'm anxious to do this again. Maybe another full day. Soon! Hope you enjoyed this adventure!

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Jeredutt3

08 May 2017
04:19:15pm
re: Road Trip Dos

Thanks for the updates. A really cool project and will look great as an album !

I love the gal letting you know she knows the rules better than the actual USPS regulations :-)
Some people ! LoL !


Keep up the good work !
Jere


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musicman
Members Picture


APS #213005

08 May 2017
06:27:12pm
re: Road Trip Dos

keep them comin', Tom!

A lot of fun reading about your crazy town cancel adventures!!


Silly







Randy

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BenFranklin1902
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Tom in Exton, PA

08 May 2017
07:51:33pm

Approvals
re: Road Trip Dos

Thanks for the kind comments!

Image Not Found

I realized that I forgot to illustrate the Trenton postmark received at the Hamilton post office, so here it is. Actually a nicely cancelled cover, but pretty darn useless. Trenton is the state capital and one of the most common postmarks for New Jersey! I already have at least a dozen different cancel types for the town in the collection. and enough duplicates to paper a small bathroom.

Image Not Found

The Clarksburg cover that was forced to do postal service showed up in the mail today. I was fortunate that it didn't get one of those sorting center smear cancels. So all in all, I got a postmark for every office I visited on Saturday. All's well that ends well!


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Author/Postings
Members Picture
BenFranklin1902

Tom in Exton, PA
07 May 2017
04:40:43pm

Approvals

Well I did it again! Another NJ postmark road rally! My wife had made a date with two of her friends to "go into the city". In New Jersey, "into the city" means New York City. Unlike where I currently live in Pennsylvania, where it means Philadelphia. Only those of us used to New York City cannot fathom Philly being taken seriously as a city. Someone from Pennsylvania was confused and asked me why "into the city" doesn't mean Newark, Trenton or Camden, NJ... well, because nobody ever goes there intentionally!

Anyway, we drove to New Jersey on Friday evening and stayed over with friends in Jackson, NJ. The girls left early for a choo choo ride, lunch and a show. That left me on my own for the day. And what's more perfect than a postal run?

This being a Saturday with short post office hours, and knowing I'd have to have a social breakfast in the morning before I could take off, I set up an abbreviated session. My goal was six post offices. So here we go...

Image Not Found


I've mentioned before my surprise at some of the easy towns that are missing from my collection. Since we have friends living in Jackson and we go there all the friggin time, I thought it was ironic that I didn't have a postmark.

The husband of my wife's friend had said he'd go to the post office one day and bring me a cancel, but I'm sure that promise was forgotten as soon as it was made. Knowing that this would be my first stop... and I actually even knew where the building was, I set out around 9:00am for the day.

I even created a cachet for Jackson as a sample. I posted this on the board on Friday but didn't get any comments, so here it is. The cachet is the state of NJ outline with Ocean County highlighted. Those with a memory (at least a better memory than my friend!) will recall that this is the piece I use for my album pages mastheads.

This was the first office of the day where a clerk balked at giving me my cancel. I was hoping that the cachet on the cover would neutralize some of the hesitation clerks had on the blank envelope since now the cover actually looks philatelic. Fortunately this is a good size office, so the clerk deferred the decision to her supervisor who met me at a side door.

He looked at the cover and without hesitation said okay. He took it over to a table I could see from the door and gave it the first unreadable WOMP! He asked me if that was okay and I asked him if he could do a second cancel on the white paper so I could read the town clearly. No problem. He even showed some interest asking me where I got the envelope. I let him know I ran it off my printer. That whole transaction took about 15 minutes.

Image Not Found

I decided to investigate the Holiday City branch of the Toms River post office. This was intriguing to because it didn't show up in any of my books, so it certainly was a new post office in this century. There are a huge number of retirement communities in the Toms River and Bricktown areas, and the original one was Holiday City. Picture thousands of little Monopoly houses, yea the little red ones! I wanted to see exactly where they had put a post office.

Image Not Found
HOLIDAY CITY - Yea, Really!

This was going to be a distance marathon because in this area of New Jersey the post offices and towns are a distance apart.. at least the post marks I needed were. So I set out from Jackson for the 15 mile / 27 minute ride. I navigated by the Waze program on my phone. Waze is pretty cool because it's live and crowd sourced.. that means that people are reporting road hazards, traffic jams, accidents and even cop locations along your route. It's also pretty intuitive so you can voice command, "Holiday City Post Office" and it will take you there. Of course I check the address against my pre-trip research to make sure.

I also set up Waze to avoid toll roads and major highways. That gave me a neat trip along scenic county roads. Most of my travels took me through farm country. For those of you who think of New Jersey as smoke stacks and Newark, you'd be amazed at how much open space there really is!

I get to Holiday City and was surprised to go inside the community gates. I thought for sure it was in a building right off the property. But no, I drove down the road of those little ranch houses and came across a small mall. Inside there were a few local stores, a few places to eat and a very small narrow post office.

The clerk was an older man and I asked him if indeed there was a Holiday City postmark. He agreed that there was. He questioned his authority to cancel my cover for me, so I pulled out my all important USPS regulation. He saw the logo at the top of the page and didn't even look at it. He said, "So you have the all important rules!" and gave me a very nice readable cancel that just clipped the corner of the stamp. Score! At this point it's a little after 10am and I have two covers.

I set out for Clarksburg, which is in Millstone Township in Monmouth County farm country. This is another 20 minutes and half hour away, a nice trip on back roads. The Clarksburg post office is located on Stage Coach Road, which no doubt was the travel route in the good ole days. This became the first bump in the road on our trip.

The postal clerk wouldn't cooperate with my request for a cancel. She refused to look at my regulation saying "they don't do that no more" and saying my regulation must be old. I tell her the copy I have from the USPS website is dated December 2016, and I'm willing to bring up the page on my phone. No, she tells me the USPS website is wrong and she knows the rules! Um, okay.

She tells me the only legal way to get a postmark is for a letter to go through the mails. So I address my cover, put a piece of paper inside to give it some rigidity and hand it to her. She put a decent cancel on it, showed it to me and put it in the outgoing mail bin behind her. Hopefully we'll get a decent cancel back in the mail. I leave here 10:45 without a cover in hand.

Image Not Found

Undaunted, I set my GPS for Perrineville, which also is in Millstone Township. This time we have a 2.5 mile / 5 minute trip. This post office is in a little worn out shopping center. It's manned by a very nice older lady. She was pleasant and wanted to help me. She said to give her a minute she wanted to check with her supervisor. She picked up the phone and instantly was connected with someone. She didn't understand that I wanted to cancel the stamp without mailing it anywhere. Her superior agreed this was okay, I was involved in the conversation because she kept asking me questions to relay to him. I asked if he was the supervisor for the Clarksburg post office. Yes he was! I asked for the phone and let him know the road block I encountered there. He said he'd have a conversation with the lady.

Image Not Found

I look for my next stop, New Lisbon,NJ and realize that I will be driving straight through New Egypt. I look at my laptop where I have all my cover images and cannot find a cover. My spread sheet shows I have a cover. Strange. I figure since I'm here I might as well make the stop. New Egypt was a quaint little town, although the post office is the typical 1960s light brick look. It had no off street parking and everyone seemed to park on the side street.

The clerk was a young attractive Indian girl. I presented my cover and asked nicely for a cancel. She reached under the counter and pulled out a huge cancel device! She tried it twice on paper to make sure it was working and carefully gave me the best cancel of the day! I was sure happy I stopped there! And yes it's on one of the cachets I printed on Friday.

I did figure out the mystery of the coordination between my spread sheet and photo library... I have a 1910 cover from New Egypt that I had received recently and hadn't been logged in yet. So I'll keep both covers in the collection.

This was now around 11:40 and I saw that the New Lisbon post office closed at 12. Waze calculates that I will get there around 12:05 so I abandon that one. The only miss of the trip! But I did get New Egypt so I have the intended count, just a different post office.

Image Not Found

I see that Browns Mills is about the same distance but is open until 2pm. I set my sights on this location instead. It's 12 miles and 20 minutes, but now I'm in no hurry. I see a longer route will include "Mount Misery Road" and I decide that I cannot pass this one up! It sounds like the road to Hell, but it pretty much was a rural country road with a lot of trees. I don't think I could buy a house on Mount Misery Road. Just not the Karma I'm looking for!

Image Not Found

I reach Browns Mills and the post office is actually brown! It was a low wood sided building, down a side street. You'd never find it just driving around town. The clerk there gave me my cancellation without hesitation and with a smile. That became the perfect end to the day. It was a bit after 1pm and I had completed my mission.. well almost!

I decided to take Route 206 up north on my way back in hope of finding an interesting place to grab some lunch. That led me to Route 130 and as I headed up through Hamilton Township suddenly I see a huge post office on the opposite side of the divided highway. It's teeming with activity so it got my curiosity. I pull up my current location and find I'm at the Hamilton Post Office and it's open until 3pm. Wow! Hamilton is again one of those offices that should be common and I'm surprised I don't have in my collection. That became even more evident for me when I recently acquired a 1931 Hamilton Square, NJ cover. So of course I stop.

What's interesting is that the building has "United States Post Office" on both the building facade, the sign out on the highway and even lettered on the doors. But nowhere does it give the town name! I get on the long line for counter service. I ask a lady on line what town I'm in, and she agrees we are indeed in Hamilton. There are two clerks working the line and it's going quickly. I reach a clerk, present my cover and she cancels it nicely immediately. I look at it and the postmark reads "Trenton, NJ"! I ask the clerk if indeed I'm at the Hamilton post office since I'm nowhere near Trenton... she says well yes, but everything is cancelled Trenton... no branch indication, nothing! As if I'm downtown Trenton! Interesting.

So that was Saturday. Feel good about this trip. It was fun and I got to see some areas of the state I hadn't seen before. I knew the challenges I'd face so I was better prepared. One thing I learned this day, was to have a sample cover with a nice corner cancel to show the clerk. "Please cancel it like this one." got good results. As always I kept my cool and was very friendly. When confronted by hesitant clerks, I usually start out with "I know you are trying to do your job, so here's the regulation that says it's okay." Then I'd place a few covers I had canceled the same day on the counter. That seemed to help a lot.

So now I'm anxious to do this again. Maybe another full day. Soon! Hope you enjoyed this adventure!

Like 
6 Members
like this post.
Login to Like.
Jeredutt3

08 May 2017
04:19:15pm

re: Road Trip Dos

Thanks for the updates. A really cool project and will look great as an album !

I love the gal letting you know she knows the rules better than the actual USPS regulations :-)
Some people ! LoL !


Keep up the good work !
Jere


Like
Login to Like
this post
Members Picture
musicman

APS #213005
08 May 2017
06:27:12pm

re: Road Trip Dos

keep them comin', Tom!

A lot of fun reading about your crazy town cancel adventures!!


Silly







Randy

Like
Login to Like
this post
Members Picture
BenFranklin1902

Tom in Exton, PA
08 May 2017
07:51:33pm

Approvals

re: Road Trip Dos

Thanks for the kind comments!

Image Not Found

I realized that I forgot to illustrate the Trenton postmark received at the Hamilton post office, so here it is. Actually a nicely cancelled cover, but pretty darn useless. Trenton is the state capital and one of the most common postmarks for New Jersey! I already have at least a dozen different cancel types for the town in the collection. and enough duplicates to paper a small bathroom.

Image Not Found

The Clarksburg cover that was forced to do postal service showed up in the mail today. I was fortunate that it didn't get one of those sorting center smear cancels. So all in all, I got a postmark for every office I visited on Saturday. All's well that ends well!


Like 
2 Members
like this post.
Login to Like.
        

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