Puns & Postage

Sometimes a random grouping of stamps will seem to appeal to a fellow (or lady) for no particular reason at all. Philately as “found art,” if you will — all that’s left to do is frame it!

Other times you’ll look at an apparently random grouping of stamps on a recovered scrap of envelope and realize that there’s something else at work. Take, for example, this one:

To me, this grouping is far from innocent; it parses it something like “Mary Lyon + Buffalo Bill Cody = Love.” Am I reaching here? See, it’s the “school marm” and the cowboy; I don’t see how this isn’t a match made in (Louis L’Amour’s version of) heaven. Here, we have a rooster, and Hubert H. Humphrey:

Or, is “Saint- Hubert” perhaps more appropriate?

Okay, that last one is a bit of a stretch. And sure, these postage puns are really just random coincidences, happenstance convergences of a person’s own symbolic vocabulary. But it might be worth a double take next time you look in your mailbox, just to be sure you’re not missing anything.