By hand . Put it in an envelope . Found a stamp buried in her drawer . Took it to a mailbox . Double checked , I 'm sure , to make sure it dropped in all the way . `` The Letter , '' performed by The Box Tops , Joe Cocker and other artists , is one of the 500 most popular American songs . To get to the bottom of the story , I made a long distance phone call to Wayne Carson , the man who wrote `` The Letter . '' The back story I asked Carson if he could imagine the guy in his song rushing to the airport -- paying full fare to get home to his baby , who seems to have sent him packing -- if she had sent an e-mail or a tweet . He says he never thought of it . He wrote the song in 1967 . Who was the guy , I asked . Was it you ? No . `` My dad was in show business for 50 years , '' Carson tells me . `` He fancied himself as a songwriter . Never wrote a
-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- The deep financial mess at the U.S. Postal Service has revealed a deep fault line in America about whether we even need the postal system . This week we heard from the `` let 'em shut down , I do all my communicating online '' group . And there are those who want to `` save the art of writing a letter by hand and mailing it . '' We 're going to get beyond this divide , right here , right now , with a real-life love story that gets to its destination , as most love stories do , through a route that 's never been traveled before . The letter Our love story begins with a guy in a rush . `` Gim me a ticket for an aer-o-plane . Ai n't got time to take a fast train . Lonely days are gone . I 'm a-goin ' home . '' Why is this guy in such a hurry ? `` My baby just-a wrote me a letter . '' The letter . That 's why . His baby did n't send him an e-mail . She wrote him a letter .