Want to hear my favorite tax-day memory? Too bad, you're going to hear it anyway. I was in high school, at a dance with my cousin Katie. Her father, my Uncle Tom, picked us up from the dance at 11:48 and said, "Quick, get in the car, we have twelve minutes to get to the post office." Then followed a wild ride through downtown Buffalo and into the old First Ward. We drove through neighborhoods that looked like the one pictured below, and my uncle, while speeding through the dark streets, took the time to give us a little history of the area, first built up by Irish immigrants in the 1820s. I was fascinated by the dismal old houses. There was not a light on in any house and their steep gables seemed vulnerable yet also slightly menacing. That midnight ride to the post office made such an impression on me that and as an adult I tried in vain to find the area he said was called the "Valley" and once even got lost after crossing two drawbridges into the sort of neighborhood where people circle you like sharks when you stop for a red light.


Anyway, back on that tax day, we screeched into the parking lot of the post office, and joined a line of cars that approached a postal clerk who stood in the middle of the lot with a stamp and a bin. You handed your tax return to him, through your car window, and he stamped it with an April 15th postmark and dropped it into the bin. I seem to remember there was some generosity here, perhaps a one or two minute extension of the deadline, like if you were in line by midnight, they'd still stamp your tax return. At any rate, we got there in time, but only just. I thought it extremely exciting. My own parents' method of paying taxes was far less dramatic.
I did a search, on tax day, to see if some post offices still stay open until midnight on April 15th, and it appears that they do not. Spoilsports.