#508 - Duckburg's Postal/ZIP Code

[Chuck Munson]

Hmmm...... all this reference to a postal code for
Duckburg is too much for the philatelist which I am to
resist delving into. (Any other Disney
comic-collecting philatelists out there on the list?)

Don Markstein correctly observed that at the time of
the story's writing, only two-digit city codes existed
for the larger cities in the US.  The ZIP codes (Zone
Inprovement Plan-Program-Project- I forgot what
exactly the "P" is for) didn't come along until the
'60's.  By the way, does the fact that the address is
simply "Duckburg, Calisota" mean that Duckburg is a
smaller city, or was the zone number unknown or
forgotten?  How's that for esoteric questions?

To speculate further:  I don't mean to reopen the
oft-contested "where exactly is Duckburg?" debate, but
offer my own suppositions to come up with a US zip
code range for it.  So here goes: Calisota being a mix
of "California" and "Minnesota", one might assume that
Barks didn't intend for it to be on the eastern
seaboard.  Other support for this: his generally rocky
beaches - except for New England, but there's a
distinct lack of palms up there I believe, which are
also present in Duckburg. I'm sure other reasons
exist, that's just the one that comes to mind since
his beaches were so different than my own familiar
southern New Jersey shore upbringing.  OK, that said,
the easy part is the standard US Postal Service
two-letter state abbreviation, a piece of
standardization I believe introduced in the early-mid
'70's. CA is taken by California, CL isn't, but I see
CS as more likely as it points out the blending of the
names.  Now for the five digit zip code.  Since I'm
making the assumption that Duckburg has access to a
major body of water, i.e. the Pacific Ocean, that
means that the code will begin with "9" (the code
progresses, more or less, east to west: 009xx in
Puerto Rico, 02xxx in Maine, down to my own 22030 in
Fairfax, Virginia, all the way to 900xx in Los
Angeles, 998xx in Alaska and 999xx in Hawaii). The
900xx-930xx range is the Los Angeles/San Diego area
while 950xx is up towards San Francisco/Sacramento/San
Jose.  My suggestion is that Calisota, for ZIP code
purposes, is a rather "unusual" "state" in the zip
code neighborhood of 940xx (which I'm certain is in
the Real World shared
by Fresno, Bakersfield, San Luis Obispo, or numerous
other central California communities).  So, my address
for Scrooge, for example, would run something like: 
McDuck Enterprises, McDuck Money Bin, 1 Killmotor
Hill, Duckburg  CS  94010.  Heaven help me for writing
on such an arcane subject at midnight on a Friday
night and bless you all for reading through it, but
there you have my own,
most-likely-seriously-flawed-at-this-late-hour theory.

Take care all and good night (or good morning to the
European members or good whatever time of day it is in
Asia),
Chuck Munson
Fairfax VA 22030 USA (The US Postal Service also
requests that we use no punctuation in our addresses-
no periods, commas, etc.-because it will help them
supposedly move the mail faster - RIGHT!)

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