I don’t live in Cascadia but I think I can relate to the situation the folks up there are experiencing with the absence of their post office.
I was there when it burned last November. Saw the whole ugly thing.
As a journalist for 30-some years, I’ve seen a lot of bad stuff, but that was one that will stick in my mind for quite a while. It was hard not to get too emotionally involved, watching that historic school building, built by the community years ago, burn down with all Bob Hubler’s classic cars inside. My dad has a collection of antique cars, so that was tough to watch.
But the final bummer was watching that beat-up trailer burn. The Cascadia post office was already on the list for consideration to be closed and when the hungry flames leaped from the school building to the trailer, well, it was not a good feeling to watch that.
When I was in my first year of college I lived with an elderly couple near Murphy, south of Grants Pass. Murphy had a general store like Holley’s or Crawfordsville’s. Inside the store was a little post office, built along one wall. It had a window and, as I recall, some postal boxes.
I don’t remember the specifics of how it was staffed, but I do remember clearly how that store and post office were the crux of life in the rural community of Murphy; nearly everybody stopped there every day or so for some gas, to buy some stamps, to get a bottle of pop on a blazing southern Oregon summer day, to mail a letter or just to shoot the breeze with the owner, who seemed to know everything that was going on in town.
A few days ago we had some friends stop by from out of state – a drier state. We decided to take them out to show them what a little rain can do, so we headed up to Cascadia State Park since we were a little short on time. I hadn’t been able to go for a run for a few days, so I decided to bail out of the car at River Bend and jog up to the park. Figured I could take a dip in the river when I got there.
Jogging’s a great way to get a good sense of a community’s layout because, if you’re like me, you don’t go very fast. You learn every rise and fall in the pavement, every turn in the road. You notice things that just whip by when you’re in a car.
Well, jogging through Cascadia — and this wasn’t the first time I’ve done it — you get a pretty good sense of the place. A lot of rather isolated houses. But people who are friendly enough to wave at a crazy jogger lurching by in the hot sun. Tough folks, but people who still have community and need one.
Problem is, without a post office, there is little opportunity to build that community in Cascadia.
That’s not the U.S. Postal Service’ problem, though the difficulty of getting mail in Foster for a lot of Cascadians is the U.S.P.S.’s problem.
What Cascadia really needs is more than just a post office, really. I wasn’t here when the Maples Store burned down, but I can imagine it was a disaster almost as significant as the loss of the post office and school building.
As I was jogging through, I wondered how hard it would really be to put a store and a post office in Cascadia. I’ve heard that the reason Maples was never rebuilt was because it was too costly to replace.
I find it hard to believe that there isn’t somebody out there with the entrepreneurial innovation to be able to figure out a way to put a store up there – at least a drive-up kiosk-type store if they couldn’t afford to meet the county requirements to do something bigger. One would think there would be a way to incorporate some level of post office service in a store. Such an enterprise could surely take advantage of the traffic on the highway, but it would provide residents with an alternative to a 20-minute drive to the nearest conveniences.
Back to the post office, though. If I were a Cascadia resident, living on Highway 20 or Cascadia Drive or High Deck or Whiskey Butte or elsewhere, I’d be listening to what Jamie Partridge (page 1) has to say.
Regardless of the USPS’ financial condition, regardless of whether those processing centers really need to be closed, regardless of what happens elsewhere, if Cascadians agree that having a local post office is crucial for their community, Partridge is right about one thing: You have to fight for it. You need to raise a ruckus. Write the letters. Make the phone calls.
That’s hard to do for some folks, the ones who don’t trust politicians, who prefer to keep their heads down and mind their own business, like a good many Cascadia folks. But the fact is, if you find it difficult to drive 15 or 20 miles on a windy, icy highway in winter every day to get your mail, it’s time to raise your voice.
Your community depends on it.