— In a recent Austin American-Statesman column, Ken Herman wrote about the imminent closure of some 3,700 small post offices across the country. The Postal Service is several billion dollars in debt, and so cost-cutting is essential. Herman's basic point was that closing some of these offices would be a public relations nightmare for the postal service.

He cited a couple of instances. The post office at Hye, TX which is located between Stonewall and Johnson City is the facility where Lyndon B. Johnson mailed his first letter at the age of four. Another example of a small post office that is possibly slated for closure is in the Old City neighborhood of Philadelphia. It was established by Benjamin Franklin and is the B. Free Franklin Post Office, so named because that is the way Franklin signed his name. Not only do many of these small post offices have historical significance, there's a blanket of nostalgia covering almost all of them.

There is one of those in my life that takes me back to my childhood like nothing else. Perhaps that's because my mother was the postmaster. (Postmistress sounds so pretentious).

My mother became the postmaster at Millersview, TX sometime around 1933. I don't remember the event at all and the only way I know the date is because my sister was born shortly before or shortly after she took the job. That is significant.

The post office was housed in a small building, I'm guessing, about 250 square feet. A wall of individual mail boxes separated my mother's work place from the small room in front where people, mostly farmers and ranchers, gathered each morning to await the arrival of the mail car from Eden. Mr. Ivy drove the mail car. More about him later.

With the arrival of the mail, my mother sorted it and put it “up” in individual boxes. Those who didn't have a box (usually because they couldn't afford the rent) called for their mail at the general delivery window, the single access between the postmaster and the patron. Through this window, she sold stamps, money orders, delivered some mail and carried on the business of the United States Postal Department, then headed by the Postmaster General, a full-fledged cabinet minister.  

As mentioned, my sister, Jane, or Janie, or Martha Jane, as she was known then, was an infant when mother took the job as postmaster. So, she was taken to the post office every day by my mother, where there was a crib and the necessary amenities to care for a child.

Mr. Ivy, meanwhile, sorted his route mail along with that which was to be delivered to the post office at Paint Rock. He then drove the 14 or so miles along a dusty caliche road to Paint Rock, delivering route mail along the way. At Paint Rock, he dropped off his mail, picked up the Millersview mail and returned.

These memories are of the WWII era, hence gasoline and tires were rationed and not everyone had a car. So, often, Mr. Ivy had a passenger who had business in Paint Rock, the county seat of Concho County.

The post office was much more than a place to pick up the annual Sears Roebuck catalogue. It was a social center for the exchange of information among the rural folks who populated that parched piece of the Edwards Plateau.

Elbert Whitfield and Bill Bryson, brothers-in-law, talked about the price of cattle. Hiram Price and Frank Evridge exchanged information about the amount of rain received last week. Tom Benge might do a little politicking as he seemed always to be running for county commissioner. Mail was extremely important. It was the connection to an outside world that was far, far away.

In addition to regular mail, Mr. Ivy brought the San Angelo Standard Times to those who subscribed. Headlines contained words like Iwo Jima, Saipan, St. Lo, Paris, Sicily, Arno and other esoteric places that otherwise would have never crossed the minds of these hard-scrabble farmers and ranchers.

Families such as the Grounds, Greebons, Evridges, Barrs and Cheathams, were directly affected by those headlines. And, the discussions about the progress of the war occurred in the small room of the post office.

To augment a rather meager income, ranch hands and share-croppers did some trapping in the fall. They brought their furs to the post office to ship to Sears Roebuck. The skunk furs usually retained the all too familiar bouquet we associate with the live specimen. In the spring, everyone in town ordered baby chicks from Sears. Try to imagine 100 little yellow peeps cooped inside a cardboard box for a couple of days. Yes, it smells just the way you imagine it would.

The post office was an essential link to the outside world, as well as the town social center.

Meanwhile, my sister was growing up. As she matured, she became the pet of the town because she was in the post office every day. She was the definition of cute. She had bright red hair, freckles sprinkled all over her face and an innate ability to charm the horns off a billy goat.

She was a favorite of Mr. Ivy. He brought her chewing gum and a nickel every day. Occasionally, she rode to Paint Rock and back with him. Other post office patrons frequently gave her a nickel or a dime, or some other gift. Once, she received an orphan kid goat from Mr. Hiram Price. That's a subject for another story. Needless to say, I was appropriately jealous of her attention and the largesse it garnered.

Even though the postmaster's job was a civil service position my mother treated it as a sacred public trust. Many nights, as we sat down to supper, there was a tentative knock at the front door. Mother would answer and I would catch the phrase: “Tiene carte para Lopez?” A Mexican farm hand, just finishing a 12 hour day in the fields needed to get his general delivery mail. She always opened the office to deliver that letter.

Millersview still has a post office, albeit, in a new building, but it is on the list to be closed. And, as Mr. Herman suggested, nostalgia will not keep these icons open, but closing them will not erase their subtle contributions to the world they served, nor will the nostalgia associated with them be erased.

• bibbunderwood@yahoo.com