Small-town post office place for community to gather

Healdsburg residents are protesting a plan to close their old post office and move all postal service to the outskirts of town.

It is as predictable as change is inevitable that such a move be seen as yet another step away from the good old days, another case of small-town blues.

Healdsburg is the perfect setting for such a protest. It's a town that has changed so dramatically and so quickly that longtime residents are exhausted from clutching at those last vestiges of the old town, of the one-time Buckle of the Prune Belt.

They are saying all the things you'd expect them to say -- that walking downtown for the mail is part of Healdsburg's charm, that the post office is good for business. People read their mail over coffee in the Flying Goat, pick up a sticky bun at the Downtown or Costeaux Bakery, maybe even meet a friend for lunch.

"It's a social place" said a teacher who often combines her trip to the post office with stops at the library -- a block away -- the bank, a bookstore.

Still others, more dramatic, compare the post office -- certainly any small-town or rural post office -- to the places people traditionally have gathered, on a daily basis.

In biblical times, it was the stream or the communal well. People met drawing water (remember Jacob and Rachel?) and exchanged the news of the day. Water was a good excuse to hang out, to share news, or just to gossip, for several thousand years, I suppose.

In Sonoma County's early years, it was the stage stop. In Santa Rosa, 155 years ago, that would have been Santa Rosa House at the corner of Third and Main (read Santa Rosa Avenue today). It was the first real hotel. It had a saloon and a barber shop. And that's where passengers brought news of the outside world.

Then Sonoma County got organized. And the post office became the spot everyone visited every day, where letters from home solidified the connection with the other side of the nation, where neighbors visited.

"DE FACTO town halls," one satisfied customer calls them. And the people who staff them, the postmasters and the clerks, seem to fully understand how important their role is to their clientele.

Sandy Volker is a clerk at the tiny Glen Ellen post office, where a giant image of Jack London, from the stamp that honors him, watches his neighbors come and go. She says "We think of ourselves as family. People come in with problems. We listen. People pass away . . ."

She is interrupted by the entrance of a man with a cane.

"May I help you?" she asks.

"You can if you're a psychiatrist," said the man.

"I've been called worse," said Sandy.

At Boyes Hot Springs, clerk Stacey Goodsell helps an elderly woman hoist a giant package onto the counter.

"Another pig painting?" she asks.

"Yes," said the woman. "This one's going to Massachusetts."

Later, Stacey explained that the woman raises pigs and uses them as models for her art. She's a regular at Boyes, where all the customers come to the office because there is no home delivery at that address.

Postmaster Jim Lake, who came to the Sonoma Valley office after serving in Sausalito and Corte Madera, calls it "a more laid back post."

"We call it a neighorhood post office, lots of older people. And we catch customers who don't want to stand in line in Sonoma."

A Glen Ellen resident I know who does business on eBay says that's one of the secrets of the small-town post office -- "No lines!"

On Tuesday, when the central offices were jammed with last-minute taxpayers, you could most likely be in and out of Glen Ellen or Camp Meeker or Cazadero or Boyes Hot Springs or El Verano or Penngrove or Occidental in nothing flat.

FOR MOST village post office customers, however, it's that family, or neighborhood, aspect that they celebrate.

"Better not run to the post office without combing your hair," said my Glen Ellen friend, "because the odds of running into someone you know are about 99 percent. There's no silence. You often know who's in front of you and who is in back of you. All the clerks and the postmaster also know everyone."

Glen Ellen Postmaster Kip Murphy has been known to hop in the little mailster and deliver a package personally to a regular customer's front door.

Postmaster John Norwood came to Cazadero, where the post office, along with the grocery store and an auto repair shop make up the entire downtown, just six months ago. But he came from Gualala and understands his community responsibilities.

"We know everyone," he said. "When we see a loose dog, we know whose it is." And maybe even call it by name.

Most customers don't walk to the post office in Cazadero, but "lots of them come out of the woods and ride their ATVs into town to get the mail."

In some of these post offices, where the post office box area is a separate room from the counter service and is never closed, the offices become unofficial homeless shelters in wet weather and, because of the "community central" status, the gathering place for the immigrant day labor force.

SEVERAL of these small offices have, in the past, been through the same kind of crisis that now faces Healdsburg.

One of the classic tales is Yorkville, in Mendocino County, where a postal official once declared that there was no longer a town, and proposed closing the post office. A customer called a quick meeting, and 50 people showed up. There is still a Yorkville P.O.

In the 1970s, there was a move to discontinue the post office at Camp Meeker, but the residents rebelled, and a mobile home was installed to act as a temporary office. That was 30 years or more ago, and it's still there -- again, the closest thing Camp Meeker has to a downtown.

Another survivor is Villa Grande, on the south side of the Russian River between Monte Rio and Duncans Mills, which may be the tiniest post office in the county.

AT THE TOP of Sonoma County, the Annapolis post office is a survivor of a number of threats of abandonment through the years. Postmaster Rae Brodjeski has been there 23 years. She's the fifth postmaster in Annapolis history.

She has one carrier, who covers a 52-mile route, and 74 P.O. boxes. "We know who has died and who has had a baby," she said. And she acknowledged that when someone asks "Where's Annapolis?" it's the post office they are directed to.

Rae's importance to the community is stressed by one of her longtime clients, Brother Toby McCarroll of the Starcross Community. Rae, he said, "maintains the post office as the community information source. She is certainly on our speed dial for any number of issues that come up, and she almost always has the answer."

"Through the years, we've lost so much," Rae said. "Our polling place, to go and vote, moved to Sea Ranch. Our fire station moved to Sea Ranch. Our store burned down.

"Basically, this is the town now, this and Horicon School, a half-mile up the road."

FOR ALL the services they provide, the small-town post office is losing volume (which means loss of revenue) just like the big ones as more and more Americans communicate by e-mail, pay bills online, and use UPS and its kin for shipping.

And, ironically, as we move further and further into this virtual community, these real places become more important.

They are the link, for the generations born in the "paper age," to the post office in the general store, the postal clerk who read your post cards, the short business meetings on the stone steps of the old Santa Rosa post office.

We cling to these memories like Healdsburg is clinging to its old post office. And we wish them well.