W Union Ends Era Stop

The following
notice appeared today on the web site of Western
Union:

Effective January 27, 2006, Western Union will discontinue all Telegram
and Commercial Messaging services. We regret any inconvenience this may
cause you, and we thank you for your loyal patronage.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact a customer service
representative.

For quite a few years now, using the Boston Globe in our classes,
when we describe
the style of English used in headlines as "Telegram English" we are met
with blank stares.  In today’s world of email, personal chat, instant
messaging,text messaging and whatnot, there is scant need for quickly
hand-delivered hard copy.

Today, for example, we exchanged text messages with our son, who was
on the beach in Puerto Chicama, Peru. I was in bed watching the rain
run down the windows, and he was
drinking a cold beer under a thached roof with his feet in the warm sand,
looking out at the longest left-handed curl in the world.

It cost me a quarter and was free for him. The messages took all of
five seconds to get from our phone to his.  Hard to compete with
that.

We are, however, old enough to remember, and to mourn the passing of,
the venerable, pay by the word telegram. During our childhood, they always
seemed to bring bad news – the passing of a distant relative, news of
an accident
or a
desperate plea for help. But as we grew older, the telegram moments grew
less frequent
and more festive – marriage, the birth of our first son (born very near
the beach he was calling from today).

Of course, Western Union has not closed up shop.  When we teach
business classes we use it as an example of a comany which has completely
remade itself as technology made its original service redundant. Today,
the business of moving money from place to place is doing quite well,
for
Western Union and others.

We wonder if they will still let us send messages along with our occasional
remittances to Peru….