My first instinct is to point a gnarled index finger at just — SOMEBODY. With email, texts, UPS, FedEx, the 21st century forest deity of cell-phoning, Zoom, the hassle of writing a letter, folding it, addressing an envelope and slapping on a stamp is rarer than a retired California Highway Patrol lieutenant without a six-figure Winnebago.  Recently, first-class postage went up to 73 cents. That’s for the basic, 1-ounce letter.  As I’m typing, this flustered me in that I wanted to say, “Gosh golly, why that’s more than — uh, um, er, hurumphmph …” In this madcap world where the planet seems to be wobbling off the giant turtle that supports it, things are stupid expensive. I can’t think of anything that costs less than 73 cents.  A BB. Lint. A single ice cube at McDonald’s. Give or take, a subscription to The Mighty Signal (259-1000). If another Democrat gets elected, I think they’re going to start charging you for thinking about the United States Postal Service.  I’ve kept a post office box for decades, going back to the early 1970s. Right now? My yearly rental is $300, or, four venti-sized lattes at Starbucks. Not that anyone writes, but that address is in the books of hundreds of people and companies. If I changed addresses now, I’d be contacting contacts into the 24th century. Another pet peeve? I’m on a work schedule of vampires and milk men. The mailbox area was open 24 hours. I used to be able to motor across the valley, sometimes in pre-dawn hours, to pick up my mail. No traffic. No people. But, a couple of years ago, the P.O. started locking the doors after regular business hours. Seems the temperature-controlled House o’ Stamps was being invaded by drunks and homeless, who would sneak in for a quiet night’s sleep on the perfectly temperatured linoleum.  I remember thinking. If the government wanted to save money — sorry. Had to stop writing. Laughing jag where I cracked a rib.  If the government wanted to save money and not raise stamp prices, all they had to do was turn the thermostat down in the summer months to non-ice cream locker temperatures.  Inflation, like your uncle, is relative.  Back on July 1, 1863, the post office started charging for mailing a letter. Price? Six cents for a 1-ounce note, just 3 cents for a half-ounce. Over the years, of course, prices climbed, although there have been a few temporary drops. Just three months after, in 1863, the mailmen drastically cut the price to 4 cents (2 cents for those skimpy on their adverbs for a half-ounce missive). Here’s a staggering statistic. Post prices went up or down a smidge, but didn’t get back to 6 cents until — are you sitting? 1968. Then, up and up and up stamp prices climbed. A decade later, in 1978, to mail a letter nearly tripled, costing 15 cents.  A stamp cost a quarter in 1988, 33 cents in 1999, 42 cents in 2008, and, death from a thousand cuts by a penny, to 68 cents this January of 2024. In July, just six months later, it leaped a nickel. A single stamp cost 18 cents more during this current presidential administration.  I can be annoyingly nostalgic. When I was a much younger fellow, there was just the one post office in the valley, on 8th Street in Downtown Newhall. I started out paying $3.14 to rent my little mailbox. I loved the small-town sense of community, of driving over to pick up the mail, bumping into friends and neighbors, stealing a moment to laugh and gossip. Overnight, in 1975, my box rental jumped to a punch-in-the-tummy $14 annually. And up and up and up again it went. All for getting a notice from Baskin Robbins that I get a free ice cream cone on my birthday although I can’t recall getting any such lovely offers from BR lately. Probably the postage. Or maybe scam artists were mailing a few dozen forms listing a few dozen birthdays.  Same time? Back in 1975? They still had a hitching post in front of the Castaic Post Office and people were riding their horses to mail a letter. For you newcomers to this former riparian ranchland, a “hitching post” is to which you tied your horse.  Speaking of horses, long before that? In the late 19th century, mail in the SCV was sent to the Lyon Station. One just sort of sensed when it would arrive and everyone in town would ride (on a horse or in a wagon) to the big general store next to the present-day Eternal Valley graveyard and pick up letters or packages. It was the established courtesy that you would also pick up your neighbors’ mail and deliver it to either their ranch or abode, or, leave it in a metal box or hole in a specific tree. I’m hoping in the summer months, no one mailed cheese.  How civilized we’ve become. It was just a century ago when Santa Clarita was ordered to adopt a brand new national fad — helping the USPS by putting house numbers on their residences and mail boxes.  All this silver dollar pinching aside, I’m not going to give up on the good old American home of the Pony Express.  As I mentioned, there’s much competition in the art of conversation over long distances. But, I have a dear high school pal and we hand-write each other actual letters — with stamps on them — a couple times a year for more than 50 years now. There’s birthday and Christmas cards I get (usually from fried chicken outlets, my optometrist or my bank). And, I regularly send letters to my daughter, back east in college. She tells me how very much these physical notes mean to her, and that?  It brings a smile. It’s just 73 cents. It means the world to me.  Living here in Santa Clarita for lo these many months, John Boston is the most prolific satirist and humorist in world history. His new, multi-media entertainment site, johnlovesamerica.com, is under construction but taking visitors. It opens with all the bells and whistles, this Halloween.  The post John Boston | $300 to Rent a Mailbox, 73¢ to Mail a Letter appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.