Jenner's 'temporary' post office to change - 25 years later

Jenner CA 95450, the post office sign says, but this is more than just a place to buy stamps and mail packages. It is the place for a friendly greeting and a recitation of the news of the day.

“This is the community center. I know just about everybody’s name, and it’s a great community,” said John Trimboli, who has been postmaster for 16 years.

It’s also clear from the customers just how intertwined the post office is in the fabric of that coastal hamlet.

Where else would the postmaster put a perishable package in the beer refrigerator next door if he knows you’re out of town? Or give you a call just to let you know there’s no mail for you that day, don’t bother coming down?

“The thing I like about it is there is no line and we have a great postmaster,” said customer Tom Yeates.

“I like John, he explains what is going on around here,” said Herby Williams, a frequent customer for 10 years. “Some people go to the barber shop, I go to the post office.

The tiny post office perched on the edge of the lagoon at the mouth of the Russian River, however, is housed in a 33-foot travel trailer that has seen better days. Soon, however, the post office itself will become the talk of the town.

Right next door a newer, larger permanent structure is in place. Like the trailer there is no running water nor a bathroom. But the new post office will be a third larger and a definite step up.

“Everything will be better over there,” Trimboli said. “The counter will be cleaner and more workable, the mail will be more secure.”

The trailer has a homey feeling, with customers’ postcards from as far away as Annapurna and Belize tacked to the walls and there are pictures of Trimboli’s son, Sam, surfing Mystos and the 1989 flood that inundated Guerneville.

It is operated by Trimboli, a clerk, delivery man and a few substitutes and serves 400 residents from Bodega Bay to Timber Cove to Duncans Mills.

The trailer, however, was used when the post office trucked it up from Pacifica to be a temporary facility in 1983 — a temporary solution that lasted more than 25 years.

The trailer is propped up by cinder blocks and trailer jacks, a tail light still on the back. The floor is worn linoleum and bare plywood and the trailer leaks in a hard rain and rocks when it’s windy.

“A lot of tourists take pictures of the place. They think it is hilarious that a post office would be in there,” said Joel Martin, owner of the Seagull Co. gift shop and the land on which the post office sits. “It is a conversation piece.”

The new building, promised since the mid 1990s, is a new modular structure that is being put on a permanent foundation. Move-in day is about a month away.

It will have the same million-dollar view.

“You can’t get more scenic then this, it is postal paradise,” said Trimboli, counting off the cormorants, seals, sea lions, Mergansers and the occasional bald eagles and golden eagles. “It’s wildlife fantasy land.”

The new post office will also play the same central role in the community.

“This is where I do business and where I get my checks,” said Yeates, an illustrator who works at home. “I depend on this Post Office and I’ll be happy to see a new post office that is less challenged.”