The latest from the U.S. Postal Service is that our little Oysterville office will remain open for the foreseeable future. The hours of window service will be cut to four a day, two on Saturdays. The lobby will be open longer than that, according to our current postmaster, Jean Smith.
That is wonderful news! We won’t be having to go into Ocean Park to get our mail and we will be able to keep our Oysterville address. That last part – keeping “Oysterville 98641” was promised earlier, but we all felt that once the physical access to our mail was elsewhere, the address would eventually change, as well. So, whew!
The exact logistics are not yet clear. The hours will go into effect sometime between now and 2014. Which hours, exactly, are yet to be determined. And I’m sure there hasn’t been a whole lot of thought as to who will open and/or close the lobby if the postmaster is only there for four hours. Surely, in our rural area, that will involve additional time and transportation.
Well… not our problem, as they say. And not the problem of Jean Smith, either. She will be retiring on July 31st, a long-awaited milestone for her. That’s great news for Jean but not-so-great for the rest of us. Jean has been the smiling face at the post office window for a good many years now –first as a temporary replacement and, since June 2, 2001, as our official, full-time postmaster.
More than that, she is our neighbor and friend. She and her husband, John, are the owners of the Oysterville Store and they live in the house next to the store/post office building. We know their cats and love their garden and look forward to Jean’s tubs of tulips each spring. We are used to seeing Jean walking along the roadside on her lunchtime break. Even the village dogs all await her eagerly, knowing that she’ll have a treat in her pocket.
Through all of these closure threats of the last year, Jean has been a stalwart advocate for our post office. She was often privy to “inside information” and could only give us the party line as directed by the post-office-on-high, but we always knew she was rooting for us. And, though I don’t think she’s ever said so, I feel she purposely postponed her retirement until the situation was resolved. Somehow, the thought in the village has been that as long as we have Jean in charge of our mail, all is well with the status of the Oysterville post office. So far, so good
This is good news indeed, Sydney! Dave said that the Republicans, who wanted to cut the number of post offices in the first place, had second thoughts when they realized that a lot of their rurual constituants were going to be effected. Whatever the reason for this latest decisions it is good for a community that was originally told they could just go to Bay Center for their mail.
Jean is wonderful. The last time I needed stamps, I went to the Oysterville PO for two reasons: one, to generate revenue for that office specifically, and two, just to see Jean’s smiling face–and to hear her latest wonderful stories about the horrors of bureaucracy she regularly encounters!
Our mail is now controlled out of a post office that is almost 5 miles from here (and 1 1/2 outside the city limits), but we have retained our zip code — although that may not hold true inyour case. But it is a major pain to have to travel further to pick up a package or missed mail and especially difficult for people who do not drive. Of course, driving 5 miles is a mere bagatelle compared to across the bay to Bay Center! I wonder if they even look at maps.
Unlike post offices in Seattle, the Oysterville post office has historical significance and is a community center. We do have our gathering spots — the pond, the coffee shops (food almost as good as Bailey’s), and the berry shack in the summer — but it’s not the same.