I said absolutely not; the post office had been paid for these stamps, circa 1922 or 1937 or 1951; the post office had gotten full price for these stamps.
The supervisor of the supervisor of the clerk examined more of the stamps.
"You have air-mail stamps (then circa 5 or 7 cents, the 1940s and 1950s), and you can't use stamps made for special services, for regular postage."
I insisted the contrary; he should check his U.S.P.S. rules and regulations; air-mail stamps could be used for regular postage.
"One can't use the old special delivery or certified mail stamps, which were fees, rather than postage, but one can use air-mail stamps, for postage."
The supervisor of the supervisor riffed through the manual, and.....I was right.
In the meantime--this was mid-afternoon, not much going on--people from other counters had noticed the "meeting," and drifted over. And clerks, from both behind the counters and the back room, came over to look at the array.
There was much examination of me, as if I were being subjected to some sort of autopsy.
"I've seen these before," someone from behind the counter commented; "someone dumps a lot of envelopes like this into the lobby box, and we have to hand-stamp all of them."
"Why do you do this," the exasperated supervisor of the supervisor asked me.
"Because I can," I said; "they're legitimate stamps, properly paid for when they were purchased, unused until I myself put them on, and apparently it's the proper postage for the weight."
It went on and on for a little while, although I suspect those people gathered around were more interested in the vast array of stamps unfamiliar to them, than in any problems I was causing the post office.
{note: there was more dialogue than this in the Omaha World-Herald, but I wrote this from memory, and missed something; for some reason, my late mother and a special delivery stamp--which I had with me, but not attached on an envelope--from the late 1910s arose as a connected subject, but I no longer remember why.}
