Our postman Dave on Lark Street in Albany, NY.
I love the United States Post Office and have had a close working relationship with them since I was a stamp collecting boy. In my weekly visits to our little Hewlett, NY Post Office across from the train station, I would bug Mr. Brower, our postmaster for plate blocks of new issues which I might or might not get depending on his mood. He could be grumpy at times and send you away with a scowl, or magnanimous and grant you your hearts delight. On occasion, he might even bestow on me the holy grail of rare issues, a plate block or two of postage due stamps. It annoys me no end when people complain about the occasional one or two cent increase in the cost of a postage stamp. The service is a bargain at twice the price!!!
When I was living in Canada, the importance of the postal system was made clear. In an effort to cut costs, the Canadian Postal System decided it would privatize and close down the post offices in many small and outlying rural communities (of which there are many in Canada). There was a huge outcry by these farming/fishing towns stating that their only contact with the government, and in fact their only concrete affirmation of being Canadian was their post office. Without that, they might as well be living anywhere. I don't know how it played out, but I felt their pain. It is now beginning to happen here. Beware America!!! "You don't know what you've got till it's gone."
Maybe it's my nostalgic connections, or the fact that a post office can offer a sense of place, especially when the building is an authentic part of the community (and not just a double wide with the USPS logo on it), but lately, I find myself taking more and more pictures of post offices. The first one I took that caught my eye and started my interest was a little shack in Goodsprings, Nevada, a small, isolated old mining town about 25 or 30 miles south of Las Vegas that is still reasonably populated and undisturbed by time.
I was showing my southwest photos at "Art on Lark", an annual outdoor art festival in Albany, N.Y. including the photo below. A woman stopped to admire it and said it was one of the best post office photos she has seen. She said she works for the post office and likes to take pictures of them where ever she goes. Given her affinity for the subject, it did my best to convince her to buy it, for her own sake because I knew she would regret it later, but alas, no sale. Maybe she figured she could take it herself next time she is in Nevada.
Taken in 2004, it was the first, and so far the best in terms of representing the lost America of Walker Evans or Bernice Abbott that continues to drive me down the back roads and around the next bend to see what's there and occasionally surprises me with something like this. Since I am still traveling, this project is a work in progress, so here is a representative sample of what I have come up with so far.
But just to say that today, 7/25/11, I read a news article that due to their billions of dollars in losses, the post office will be closing 3500 post offices across the US, particularly the smaller (and usually more interesting) ones, so start mailing letters and go out and take a picture of your post office. It may not be there next year, and you will regret it and all those jokes you made about "snail mail".
Actually this post office is kind of close to home, in Grafton, New York, and kind of looks like it was once a school house.
By all accounts, Jay Em, Wyoming has a population south of 50, so this might be all the post office they need, hope they can keep it.
Sparks, Nebraska.
Other than the church, this post office/general store is the only commercial building in town. People come here for their mail, they stop, talk, have a cup of coffee, etc. It is the glue that holds the town, indeed, the country together. The unseen forces tearing at the fabric of our nation identity are the one's demonizing our sacred post office. Once they succeed in destroying it by turning Americans against their friend, the postal worker, they have won!!!
Its not the "right to bear arms", its the post office that we have to protect.
Rulo, Nebraska
Ruskin, Nebraska
Harrisville, New York
Angora, Nebraska. One of those slated for closure.
Rockport, Mass, The Pigeon Cove Office
Preston Hollow, New York
Wauneta, Nebraska
Arapahoe, Nebraska
Medusa, New York
New Bremen, New York
Stuyvesant Falls, New York
Malden Bridge, New York.
North Hoosick, New York. Not too far from where we live. This is one of the post offices that is slated for closure in the next round of down sizing. I hear that it is the smallest post office (in physical size) that will be closing. When I was taking the picture, someone told me that lots of people photograph this building. That's good. Everyone should take a picture of their post office so that when it is no longer there they will have a record of their old friend.
So we were driving along the Tamimami Trail through the everglades about an hour before sundown on our way to Punta Gorda and enjoying the vast emptiness of grass and sky that is the everglades when out of nowhere we saw it, what turned out to be the smallest post office in the United States in an area called Ochopee, Florida. When you're not looking for anything, there it is.
Acadia, Florida
Lake Wales, Florida
Mussina, Iowa
Riverton, Nebraska
Rushville, Nebraska
Laurel, Long Island, New York
As if I needed a reminder of the way in which the post office holds together the fragile social fiber of our slowly disintegrating sense of connectedness amidst the "miracle" of this electronic age where communication has been reduced to a disembodied tweet of 29 words or less, while I was taking this photo in Laurel, I talked with 3 or 4 people who were curious about my photographic interest in some as "mundane" as their post office, found out something about them and their families, and spread the gospel of the messianic, overarching value of something they take for granted but shouldn't. Take a picture of your friend and companion, your US post office so you will remember it when the fascists come wrapped in their flags an close down your last contact with the outside world. To the left is Jackie, mailing a letter.
Almena, Kansas
Duncan, Nebraska
To the right of the picture is the postmistress who was just coming out to lower the flag as I was lining up this picture at almost 4:00. She waited patiently as I took the picture and wondered what I was doing. I explained my mission to try to take as many pictures as I could of interesting post offices so that some day someone will remember them and wonder what America was like back then. She seemed pleased and I like to think that she saw her little outpost of the US government with new eyes.
Treynor, Iowa
Loretto, Kentucky
French Lick, Indiana, hometown of Larry Bird, and proud of it!!!
Spring Gap, Maryland
Bassett, Nebraska
Death Valley, California
Keeler, California, a desolate, isolated town on a dried up lake bed on the west side of Death Valley. For all intents and purposes something of a ghost town, a relic from another era, but still meritorious enough to have its own post office.
Long Island, Kansas
We come from Long Island, NY so it was beholden on us to go out of out way to check out Long Island, Kansas. It was overcast and there was not much there to see. Furthermore, it is in the middle of vast grain fields. Not an island at all. The only person I saw in town was a woman crossing the street with a young child. I stopped her to ask a few questions, but wouldn't you know it, she didn't speak english. Happens to me all the time.
Seaside, Florida
Faux, but fantastic. A recently constructed monument to the majesty of the US Post Office. Obviously designed by someone with the same reverence for the institution as I have. Luckily it was not left up to some lowest bid non governmental contractor, or it would have looked like the nondescript structure inflicted on Anamoose, North Dakota
I was reading an article recently on some web page or other, I now wish I could remember which, exposing the fact that the post office in not at all as bankrupt as the government would have us believe. Its just that other government departments are allowed to take money from the post offices general account to fund other government operations, like our wars, and building post offices in Iraq as part of out effort to reconstruct that country we destroyed. But it is obviously easier to demonize the postal system and and our hard working postal workers, than to take a good hard look of the dysfunctional government of which it is a part. A slight of hand to distract us from the hard truth.
I have often said that when historians will one day chronicle the downfall and demise of the American empire, they will begin the account with 9/11 (although it could easily begin earlier), and I am now beginning to realize that the history will end with the closure of the last post office in the United States, that most truly American of all of our institutions.
Pablo
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