Amongst all the tweets and updates, blogs and comments, some might not even notice (or care) about the news that up to 1,000 post offices might soon close in the near future.  An article in this morning’s L.A. Times details the cuts being considered and reports the potential fallout for cities and neighborhoods nationwide.

What’s the great loss?

For hundreds of communities, it’s one more quiet step toward virtual extinction.  Many of these small towns lost their shops and grocery stores to the outer limits of strip nearly two generations ago.  Town greens were converted into a hopeful sea of asphalt that now sit empty.

These gathering places dried up long ago, but the U.S. Post Office remained intact thanks in no small part to the support of the American tax-payer.  But now, not even a horrifying bi-yearly 2 cent increase in stamp prices can save this federal department from severe cost-cutting.

And while we all have our stories that exemplify how the post office is a model of inefficiency, these smaller branches served another purpose. It’s where members of a community could still run into their neighbors and share a few kind words. But no amount of nostalgia can compete with the very real fact that newer branches are where the volume is.  So while the fed still maintains in the article that no final decisions on closings have been made, most of these neighborhood post offices and their customers can already read the writing on the wall.

We sacrificed these places along time ago, but they’ve hung around like a friendly reminder – for those who could remember – of a time gone by.  But now it looks like the jig is up.

Rest in peace small town post offices. May you all one day become candy stores.