Saturday, February 01, 2020

Box 172



Some things don't change...well, not much anyway.

I grew up on a small farm just east of Midale, Saskatchewan.  At that time, from the late 1950's to the early 1970's, the post office was the centre of all written communication.  Going to pick up the mail was a big deal...letters and cards written by hand, parcels from mail order catalogues and of course bills and payments of all sorts.  One day when I was about ten years old, my parents and I were parked outside the post office and I was finally "old enough" to take the mail key and pick up the mail all by myself. 

Over forty years later I returned to that same post office to see what had changed...and it really hadn't changed much at all.

Above is a photo of our old post office box.


This is the same mail sorting desk with the same green Arborite® desk top that has been in the post office lobby for decades.


More mail boxes and the community bulletin board which displayed an invitation to a baby shower, a perogie supper at the senior's hall, a reading club and many others.  The notices are new but everything else is just the way I remember it.


Mail your letters here.  The spring on this drop box was awfully strong when I was a kid and it's still a tough one to open.


The only noticeable change I saw was to the exterior of the building.  The upper part of the front facade used to have a stained wooden finish and now it's been painted white while the lower part has been covered in vinyl siding.

All these years later I still have a post office box and some days it's still a big deal to go pick up the mail.

Photographed on October 18, 2017.

2 comments:

  1. Our small prairie town post office was a big stone building with green counters, wickets and a distinctive "government" smell. In the summer when I was off school, it was my job every morning to bike to the PO, collect our mail, take any letters to my Grandma over to her, and then bring the rest home. There was no "junk mail" in those days. Every letter counted. Near the silver boxes was a large green writing stand for people to address their letters or postcards, etc. This is where any recent "death cards" from the undertakers would be set out, saying who died and when their funeral was. Eventually my Grandma's death card was displayed there too.

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