As I understand it, Postmaster General Jim Farley had the reputation of being able to remember the name of every person he had ever met. It must have been very comforting to people using the postal service at the time. They could tell themselves that, if a letter for them ever went astray and ended up at the dead letter office, "Jim Farley will see it, and he knows who I am." Not true, of course, but comforting.

I read a story that Jim Farley told about how he kept his reputation: a man came up to him and said, "I bet you can't remember who I am, Stretch." Farley said, "Well, hold on a minute", and frantically tried to remember who this guy was. The only people who had ever called him Stretch were from his home town, so he mentally went up and down every street in his home town, looking at the faces of everyone who lived there - and he found this guy's face. Only problem was, he couldn't remember this guy's name. He could remember the name of everyone else in the family, but not this guy.

So he said, "How's your sister Sue?"

The guy answered, "You knew who I was all along."