Bennett Kyte, age 8, of Burbank, South Dakota, for his question:
How does the zip code work?
The word kudos means a little bit of glory. It may be a medal or a merit badge, a blue ribbon or a gold star. In any case, it makes us feel special. We ail need a small helping of kudos to make us glow with glory every now and then. The zip code, besides being useful, gives a bit of kudos to everybody.
A letter with your name and address on the envelope is yours and yours alone, When the postman brings it, you get a special feeling of importance. If your pen pal has added your zip code to your address, you feel an extra glow of kudos. This shows that he did his very best to get your letter to the right address just as quickly as the post office people can deliver it. Zip codes were invented because this job was getting bigger and harder every year.
Try to imagine all the different addresses in all the states and cities, towns and all the homes and offices, farms and street numbers and apartment numbers in our whole country. Now imagine 72 billion pieces of mail traveling back and forth between all these places every year. And every year we mail about two billion more letters, cards and packages. You have to strain your brain to imagine the growing problem. It was getting too big, even for the busy Postal Department. So the zip code was invented to make things easier.
The whole country is dotted with post offices of assorted sizes where mail is collected, sorted and delivered or sent on the next lap of its journey. The zip code makes this routing work easier and quicker. Every address has been awarded a row of five simple figures and every sensible person learns his proper zip code number. Codes are easier and faster to read than ordinary writing, which is one reason why they are used by secret agents. There is, however, nothing secret about your zip code.
It is based on 10 major areas of the country, each divided into smaller and smaller units. Postal people call the five figures digits. The first digit stands for one of the 10 big areas. All zip codes in Iowa and five other states in the same major area begin with the digit 5. In a major area, there are dozens of main post offices or sectional centers where mail is sorted and routed on its way. There are more than 500 of these centers in the country. The second and third digits stand for one of these centers.
The last two digits stand for a local delivery unit. This is where the journey begins and ends. The postal people are trained to read the codes in a flash and zip the mail on its way. When you mail a letter, it goes to your local postal unit. The zip code tells which sectional center it must go to next. There it is sorted and goes on its way to a local unit. The last two digits direct the letter to the right delivery bag. A postman on his route will deliver it to the address of your pen pal.
The job of delivering all our mail is not easy, even with the help of our speedy zip codes. Maybe the postal people will think of even better ways to simplify the work in the future. Meantime, we all are very particular about zip codes. 41e keep address books and add the right zip code number after each address. We write the five figures, round and clear, on every letter ox card we mail. The zip number may be written after the name of the state but be sure to leave a couple of spaces between the letters and the figures. Or you may write the zip code on a separate line of its own below the name of the state.