Ages / Postal Codes / flavors of English

[Haggridd]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, Susan Fox-Davis <selene at e...> 
wrote:
 
> <I think we also have that in large USAmerican cities ... at least,
> the middle part of Los Angeles has zip codes that contain the pre-
zip
> code "zone" number, like 90033 for what I am told was once LA 33.>
> 
> Before my time.  I think somebody was a very big smarty pants who
> designated the Gay-friendly region of West Hollywood [now its
> own municipality, independent of LA] as 90069.  The residents
> don't seem to be particularly insulted but glory in it.  Good on 
them!
> 
> Susan Fox-Davis
> selene at e...

Speaking as one old enough to remember (54) and laso as one who had a 
summer job at the Post Office (when it still was the Post Office and 
not the Postal Service), I can explain the last two digits of the zip 
code.  Each individual branch post office had a two digit code, to 
use your example, Los Angeles 33, California; or from when grew up, 
Flushing 58, New York.  Each of these smaller branch offices slaved 
to a larger post office-- in my case the Flushing Main P.O.  This had 
a three digit identifier, 113.  New York city was large enough to 
have many of these "Main" post offices, as did Los Angeles.  The five 
digit zip code was nothing more than putting the two codes together 
and writing them on the envelope so that the sorting would be 
easier.  The last four digit in the "zip plus four" that they 
subsequently tried to introduce-- with mixed success-- was simply 
adding the four digit code for the mailman's route that they had 
always used internally.

Haggridd