The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1895-02-26
UNCLAIMED PACKAGES.
There Was Whole Raft of Them in
MissouIa's Express Office

| hlssoulaS Express once.
MIssoULA, Feb. 25.-Express Agent Lud
| lum has just completed his annual house
cleaning and he and the invincible Gus
have had their hands full for few days
| The cause of this unusual proceeding was
an order from headquarters to forward
all unclaimed packages to Seattle, where
| the annual auction sale will be held this
week. There was whole raft" of stuff
sent away in response to this order and
now the football of a visitor to the express
office echoes in the store room back of
Mr.. Ludlum's office, where before there
was hardly room enough to turn around
in.
There were several hundred unclaimed
parcels in the Missoula office and when
Gus Nelson got the whole lot down to the
depot the platform looked as if Chief
Charlots tribe was on an exodus from the
reservation, for the larger part of the
stuff was composed of rolls of blankets of
all colors and all stages of preservation
or rather all stages of decay, for none of
them were well preserved. Some of them
looked as If they had been through a war
or else out on a government surveying
expedition. and all of them had seen hard
usage. Then there were boxes and bum
dies of all shapes and sizes, wooden boxes.
tin boxes, pasteboard boxes and iron
boxes. There were bundles neatly and
securely tied and bundles that were fall
ing apart.
Some of the boxes were directed in fem
mime handwriting, as if they might con-
tain remembrances sent from mothers
to absent sons or from sweethearts to
wandering lovers. There was material
enough TO furnish a sentimentalist with
IrNf- fr.Kr e.
handled them all alike and treated them
as II there was no sentiment in the ex-
press busness-and, indeed, there is very
little.
After the miscellaneous cargo had been
put aboard No. for its westward trip, a
STANDARD reporter sought Gus Nelson,
the veteran express messenger, in his
room at the depot, where he was comfort
ably pulling his pipe and waiting for the
arrival of No. 2. The reporter asked the
eXpressman how it is that so many rolls
OF blankets are among the unclaimed ar
ticles, when these blankets usually repre-
sent the entire worldly goods of their
owners. The old man filled his pipe
anew and said: "Well, I'll tell YOU"
II have seen the whole business. l
know just how these rolls get lost. just
the other night man brought his roll of
blankets to the Missoula Office to be sent
away. He paid the express charges in adj
vance-the company will not accept
blankets in any other way. He took his
receipt and then went out and got drunk.
During the night he lost his receipt some-
where and when he finally sobered up he
couldn't remember what he had done with
his blankets. That is the way it usually
happens. Or, if the man remembers taxi
ing them to the express office. he forgets
where he had them addressed 10.
Then it sometimes happens that, after
they have shipped their blankets by ex-
press, these men get killed while beating
their way on the trains, for nearly all of
them that express their blankets take that
means of getting to where they want to
20. Again, it happens that in getting to
the place to which he has had his blankets |
sent, the man finds work before he gets
there, and so never goes after them. |
There are lots of ways in which these |
blankets get on the unclaimed list. Their |
owners are a lot of d-n chumps, usually, |
anyway"
No. was whistling into the yard as the |
veteran .expressman made this sententious |
and he left the reporter abruptly,
,rowding his way through lot of station |
Ioungers, many of whom looked as if they |
would like roll of these blankets, which |
rad never been claimed by their owners.