The Third Junction

SORROW OF NOT FINDING THIRD JUNCTION BACK

But I’ve never again found the corridor that leads to the third level at Grand Central Station, although I’ve tried often enough. Selena was pretty worried when I told her all this, and didn’t want me to look for the third level any more, and after a while I stopped; I went back to my stamps. But now we’re both looking, every weekend, because now we have proof that the third level is still there. My friend Whan Weiner disappeared! Nobody knew where, but I sort of suspected because Whan's a city boy, and I used to tell him about Galesburg ” I went to school there” and he always said he liked the sound of the place. And that’s where he is, all right. In 1894.

Because one night, fussing with my stamp collection, I found- Well, do you know what a first-day cover is? When a new stamp is issued, stamp collectors buy some and use them to mail envelopes to themselves on the very first day of sale; and the postmark proves the date. The envelope is called a first-day cover. They're never opened; you just put blank paper in the envelope.

That night, among my oldest first-day covers, I found one that shouldn't have been there. But there it was. It was there because someone had mailed it to my grandfather at his home in Galesburg; that’s what the address on the envelope said. And it had been there since July 18, 1894 ” the postmark showed that” yet I didn’t remember it at all. The stamp was a six-cent, dull brown, with a picture of President Garfield. Naturally, when the envelope came to Granddad in the mail, it went right into his collection and stayed there ” till I took it out and opened it. The paper inside wasn't blank.

It read:

941 Willard Street Galesburg,

Illinois

July 18, 1894

Sherlock

I got to wishing that you were right. Then I got to believing you were right. And, Sherlock, it’s true; I found the third junction! I’ve been here two weeks, and right now, down the street at the Daly’s, someone is playing a piano, and they’re all out on the front porch singing Seeing Nelly Home.And I’m invited over for lemonade. Come on back, Charley and selena. Keep looking till you find the third junction! It;s worth it, believe me!

The note is signed Whan.

At the stamp and coin store I go to, I found out that Whan bought eight hundred dollar’s worth of old-style currency. That ought to set him up in a nice little hay, feed and grain business; he always said that’s what he really wished he could do, and he certainly can’t go back to his old business. Not in Galesburg, Illinois, in 1894. His old business? Why, Whan was my psychiatrist.