My biggest dilemma in our adventurous escape to East Texas involved the magical world of Disney.  Along with my first visit to the nearest Post Office – about 12 miles from our little lake house. I had a huge stack of query letters – all to business folks in places such as New York, Boston, and San Francisco. I needed a sheet of 37-centers, that’s all.

 All alone in the Post Office I was, except for one male mail person. I asked for generic flag stamps. Didn’t have any, he said. He placed a sheet of Disney stamps on the counter as if that was that. Right. Horrid visions popped into my mind as my business letters – invitations to purchase my articles and art – arrived from the middle-of-nowhere Texas with cute little Disney characters pasted in the upper right hand corner. Really, would you send Tinkerbell to Mr. Joe Somebody in New York? Or maybe Dumbo to Ms. SuperAgent in Boston?

 I told him that wouldn’t work at all; yes, me, the bold stranger in a small town. Mr. Mail Person was not amused, either. That’s all they had, he said. I looked inside my big manila envelope stuffed with my nice white proposal letters and murmured that I would have to go to another post office, one that was 15 miles in another direction.

 Suddenly, almost angrily, he pulled open a drawer and pulled out a sheet of stamps. I glanced down, hoping against hope that they would be usable. Clouds. And not very many of them, either. I couldn’t imagine who this last sheet of cloud stamps might have been for. Nor could I imagine a Post Office that had only Disney stamps on offer.

 I decided nimbus, cirrus, and cumulus were a heap better than my Disney options and paid.

 Welcome to East Texas.