Being that a cigar box is the size of a cigar box, those gums are in heroic scale. The attractive and understated Montecristo cigar band — in a rich walnut brown — has also disappeared.

The brown box handed to him by his mail carrier on Oct. 9 was addressed to Gayer’s Saddlery, the company where he’d worked in the 1970s in Laurel, Md., then purchased in 1995.

Mail Services Manager Fred Yattaw said he hopes to have the program up and running soon, after the early semester mail rush slows down. The e-mail system would ideally begin "after the dust settles" ...