38 Whole Number 227
son as an initial (“UTF”) and spelled out
(“Unable to Forward”). The black point-
ing hand does have “RETURNED TO
SENDER” on its palm. Second, it has a
black pen manuscript “UTF” by the ad-
dress. Third, a yellow label says it all, “RE-
TURN TO SENDER/NO FORWARDING
ORDER ON FILE/UNABLE TO FOR-
WARD/RETURN TO SENDER”.
Some of the post cards simply had just the
initials used on it. Such a post card is shown
in figure 10. The black marking has the ini-
tials “UTF” and a pointing hand. The hand
says “RETURNED TO SENDER” and has
three lines to fill in. The first line is for the
Figure 8
route number. The second line is for the
ABLE TO FORWARD”. The author is at a
loss why someone would go to the trouble
of using a handstamp auxiliary marking on
this post card when the reason has been
given on the label.
Another example of a marking where both
the initials and actual reason appear is shown
in figure 8. Here one finds a post card with
a black pointing hand marking that reads
“NSN – No Such Number”. The carrier also
added another “NSN” in black ink next to
the bar code.
The post card shown in figure 9 has the same
reason given three different ways. First, it
has a black pointing hand with both the rea- Figure 9
carrier’s initials, and the third line is for the
date. The barcode for the sender’s address
appears at the bottom of the post card. There
are no other markings that would serve to
explain the mystery of “Unable to forward”.
Finally, the post card in figure 11 is shown
simply because of the larger size of its red
“UTF” marking. The yellow label attached
to the bottom of the post card spells out ex-
actly why it is being returned.
By having so many post cards to use as a
“data base”, one can see trends in the use of
certain markings. The author had never seen
so many uses of initials before. One of the
main functions of auxiliary markings is to
Figure 10
inform the sender, recipient or postal worker
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