Saturday 2o January, 2007

9°F. with 8 mph wind, Bright sunshine.

I walked to the Postoffice to pick-up the mail. Looking out the window, the day looked bright and so, I thought it would be a mild walk. Wrong! The wind coming off the river was frigid and in my face.

Still and all, I do enjoy walking the three blocks to th P.O. In my village of 450 people we don't have mail delivery. You can get rural delivery via a neighboring "city" if you install a roadside mailbox. A few residents do so, but the majority of us rent a mailbox at the post office. It can be inconvenient when working away from the village (which most of us do) and can't get back to the village before 1645.

Besides being the mail repository, our P.O. is much like the general store of old, sans the woodstove and checker board. It's a gathering place for disemination of local gossip, and problem-solving the grander predicaments of the day. Of course one must have a finger on the pulse of the community to ensure that you're there at the appropriate time. If you go at other times you have to rely on the postal clerk to dish the dirt and some times they're too busy filling the boxes to take time to kibbitz with you.

Mon. thru Fri. you should arrive between 1200 & 1215 or 1600 1nd 1630. On Sat. stop in between 1000 and 1100. Sunday? Drop into the coffee shop..... if open.

Today There wasn't any inclination to chat. Everyone was tuned to business...get the mail and get going. Saturday is usually a meager mail day for me, but since I was too late to pick it up yesterday, I did have a pasal of mail today, though predominantly junk. However my recent order from Amazon was in and made the trip wholely worthwhile.


A tip of genealogical interest...to me at least. The building which houses our post office was, in an earlier time, a store. In fact it was a grocery or as known then, a general store. The proprietor of which was my father's father. The family lived in the upstairs apartments. This would have been1915-1923. My grandmother died there when my dad was three. Shortly thereafter, my grandfather sold the store to an older brother, who, together with his wife ran it as a crockery and fine china store.

The man behind the counter is my grandfather. The lad in the rear is not identified. Circa 1915-1923