Vanishing breed: my rural post office project Part 1

On the closure list, Hoytville's office might be spared, but at the cost of being reduced to two hours of operation a day Photos Aaron W. Gonya 2012

        Anyone who follows the news is aware of the difficulties affecting the U.S. Postal service. Although it now seems that the imminent closure of thousands of rural post offices has been averted, the new strategy, which involves cutting the hours of operation of many offices to as little as two hours a day will also have far reaching consequences.
        To many people who live in larger towns and cities the Post Office is often little more than the carrier delivering the mail from their ubiquitous mail truck.
        To the citizens of rural areas and small towns the U.S. Post office takes on an entirely different character. There are no fleets of postal trucks, no familiar carriers walking the neighborhood with their bags of mail.  In fact in most small towns home delivery is not even offered. For the vast majority of Americans who live in a small town getting the mail involves a walk or short drive to the local Post office.

Grelton's post office is the corner of the
town's grain elevator

        If you live outside of a town, your mail might come in a any number of vehicles. From aged rusting postal jeeps to Subaru wagons to well worn Wranglers and Cherokees rural carriers supply their own vehicle to handle their routes. Far removed from the fleets of trucks and mini-vans used in urban areas.
        I set off, on what might be a race against time, to capture the rural postal service before it fades away.  Although the closings are now on hold, e-mail and package services such as Federal Express have eroded the business that has kept the U.S. Postal service in operation. My goal is to document the face of the rural post office, far removed from the monolithic buildings, vast fleets of vehicles and automated sorting centers of the more urban areas.
      Almost every small town post office is unique, the few who share an architectural style are time capsules direct from the very early 1960's. The rest range from repurposed store fronts, old banks and houses and all across the gamut to the basement of a Legion hall and a corner of a grain elevator office.
      In the city, or even a larger town everything is kept up to date, uniformly marked with the current USPS eagle logo. (In use since 1993).  However the farther you venture from the major population centers, the less the passage of time seems to have touched them. Step into a rural post office and you might find the older signage still displayed, a service information center (tack board) from the 1950's still kept up to date with the important events of the town, brass post boxes and no shortage of improvised, home made and hand painted signs. The local postal employees were generally residents of the villages they served and the post office became a  reflection of it's Postmaster (Or in the past, often it's Postmistress) and it's community.
     The economy has taken a harsh toll on far too many of these small towns, business close, and younger people move to cities where jobs are easier to find. Villages like Grelton, in Henry county once had four gas stations and several stores, now little remains but the grain elevator.  Grelton's post office might be a window into the future of the rural postal service. Grelton is a C.P.U., a Contract Postal Unit, Grelton elevator employee Eric Norden  handles the mail for the village in addition to running the grain elevator.  It's a system that seems to work very well for the town.

   The interior of the Grelton Post Office

     I've had a very positive reception so far in talking to the postal workers and visiting and photographing these offices. Uniformly they are proud of what they do. Many of them have 20-30 year careers with the USPS, and they all come across as very proud of their offices and the communities they serve.