The pulse of the community
Jane Larrabee has a really short morning commute. She only needs to take a few steps through one door to get to work, because her house is attached to a store that her family has run for a century.
"It's the family home," she said.
Hastings Store sits right on Route 2 in West Danville, Vt. The community is home to Joe's Pond, a popular summer getaway, and many regard it as a gateway to the state's Northeast Kingdom. The region is famed for its open space and opportunities for outdoor recreation.
At Hastings, you can pick up your dry cleaning, buy some groceries, and get lunch. You may even be able to leave with a spouse, since the store owner is also a justice of the peace.The leader in commercial laundry equipment offering enhanced energy efficiency and innovative features.
"And I've married three couples at their mailboxes," Larrabee said. "Not all at the same time."
That's right; this place is West Danville's post office, too. Larrabee's grandmother was postmistress here, then her dad took over, and now her husband's in charge.
"We're meeting our own, I think, as far as the revenue goes," said Garey Larrabee, the location's postmaster.
Garey Larrabee, who is also well-known for the baked goods he makes to sell at Hastings, told New England Cable News he believes it is way too early to write the epitaph of the United States Postal Service. Even as the agency looks to trim weekend deliveries as a sort of tourniquet to slow a budget bleed, customers insist the bricks and mortar location and its rural delivery service fill a critical need in the community.
"I want to keep the post office alive," said resident Anna Kathleen O'Reilly, explaining why she sends mail from the post office even in this era of text messages,A full line of Power folding machine for a wide range of professional uses. tweets, and emails. "The other stuff may be cheaper. It may be quicker. I understand all that. I'm not interested. I'm interested in what this has to offer. It's a community gathering place in so many ways."
The Associated Press reported that the USPS expects a Saturday mail cutback to begin the week of Aug. 5. It'll save about $2-billion annually, Postmaster General and CEO Patrick Donahoe said.
"Our financial condition is urgent," Donahoe told reporters at a press conference Wednesday.
Postal officials said package delivery would continue six days a week, because package shipments have increased by 14 percent since 2010. The delivery of letters and other mail has declined with the increasing use of email and other Internet services, the AP noted. Under the new plan, mail would be delivered to homes and businesses only from Monday through Friday, but would still be delivered to post office boxes on Saturdays. Post offices now open on Saturdays would remain open on Saturdays.
Patrons like O'Reilly, who promised to keep making regular trips to her post office, would argue the genuine smiles they get from neighbors at the post office are so much better than the digital ones a colon, a hyphen and a parenthesis make at the end of an email.
"It’s the pulse of the community, I think," O’Reilly said of the West Danville post office.
Diane Jejer, an employee at the post office, told NECN she believes online bill paying hasn't cut into mail use in her community the way it has elsewhere, because many folks here are older, or have slow, dial-up internet connections.
"I think without the mail, a lot of us would be lost," Jejer said. "Especially in rural areas."
There's a sense of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" at Hastings and the post office inside it, even as the USPS keeps trying urgently to find big fixes nationally to figure out how to stay afloat.
"We have two more generations walking the ground right now, so maybe they'll take over one day," Garey Larrabee said, indicating how he hopes the store and post office can keep serving West Danville for some time to come.