I could not believe what I was confronted with at the post office today! An empty post office! I even had to ring the bell to get a clerk out to help me. To my shocked inquiries she said that there was a mob of people earlier, and they open at 7:00 am. I just know that the bigger post office, about a mile away, was jammed with last-minute filers, like me.
We have a tiny post office that is for a small town that's closer to where we live than the bigger town which is also in our county. This cute little post office is forgotten about. It's mostly full of PO Boxes (cause many homes in the town don't have mailboxes.) This small town is determined to allow civilization to grow up around them. It is very quaint, but in an unself-conscious way - not a quaintness designed for selling something. The houses in this hillside town harken back to the 18oo's where the train used to stop for "summer wildflower picking excursions". The houses are along the line of small summer cabins, some of them rather decrepit looking, scattered in disarray up a steep hillside. Going to this post-office, with it's one clerk, a woman that I've seen here for years, is like stepping back in time. This was actually what we had in mind when we first moved away from the zoo that is California to our new rustic area. Then big developments came putting up ticky-tacky rows of houses, many now waiting to be sold. But here, in the one-horse town life goes on much as it used to. I even saw a big hand-made sign for Texas hold 'em poker. Gambling is illegal here, so the residents just get.s together to have fun. They even have a yule- log hunt at Christmas time, which is big news, the winner on the cover of our local newspaper.
This town has a small lake nearby, beside the railroad tracks, which freezes over each winter and on which people go ice-fishing or ice-skating. It's lovely in the summer too, when there are fishing contests for the kids, and trails for biking or walking. The coal trains that lumber past are exciting to see and count - often with at least 100 boxcars filled with coal - which sometimes blow off on a windy day. One can collect lumps of coal for one's fireplace if you have a real fireplace and not one fueled by gas. In the winter the air is filled with the comforting scent of woodsmoke from Franklin stoves and such.
There is one local bar with an Irish name. In good weather, it is surrounded by oceans of motorcycles every weekend. Even a local quarterback hero, from the really big city, 50 miles away, has been seen there, with his coach (both now retired). This is an NFL quarterback and coach! My husband saw them there once, and everybody was cool, not swamping them for autographs, etc.
The wildflowers? Well, they seem to be rather scarce these days. Or maybe one just has to look more carefully for them when summer rolls around. For now this small deserted post office on income tax day, was a rare wildflower indeed.
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