On the pickups and cars in Livingston, Montana, a bowlegged-cowboy town of slightly more than 6,000 notable for a giant rock formation allegedly resembling a sleeping Jesus, a popular bumper sticker declares, THERE ISN'T MUCH TO SEE IN A SMALL TOWN, BUT YOU SURE DO HEAR A LOT. And the place in Livingston where you mostly hear it--rumors about layoffs at the lumber mill, fishing reports on the nearby Yellowstone River--is the downtown post office. The 1914 beaux arts sandstone edifice, surrounded by coffee shops, saddleries and movie theaters that have survived the town's trend toward franchised sprawl, is a kind of communal hitching post.
"It's so much more than where you get your mail," says John Fryer, proprietor of a dry-goods store established by his great-grandfather. "It's the anchor of our business district, the place where you meet your neighbors. Our heart and soul."
Livingston's heart is set to be transplanted, and the body politic is feeling the knife. Last November the U.S. Postal Service rode into town with an abrupt announcement: the post office was leaving the central site it had occupied for 80 years, preferably for a car-friendly location amid the strip malls and burger joints out of town. "They met with us on a Tuesday," says stunned city-council member Caron Cooper. "On Wednesday there was an ad in the paper soliciting bids for land." Dan Glick, a community activist, is peeved: "Those people gave us more say on whether the Elvis stamp would show the new Elvis or the old Elvis than they did on the future of our town."
Livingston is not alone. America's political catchphrase of the hour is "community building," yet the U.S. Postal Service seems to have lost the message in the mail. In cities and towns from Maine to Wyoming, the story is the same: remote, often arrogant Postal Service officials swooping down to summarily relocate what to many heartland residents is the secular equivalent of steepled white chapels. It's as if the feds raided Mayberry to cart away the barbershop.
"It's a major problem," says Richard Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. "Downtowns are the key to communities' viability, and these post offices are the key to the downtowns. When you close one or move one, the effects are devastating."
Ask Mayor Terry Overmyer of Fremont, Ohio, who has been battling the Postal Service for two years in hopes of quieting the giant sucking sound of outlying megamalls and superstores. "They wanted to move our post office out by the Wal-Mart. We offered them whole city blocks downtown, but they just ignored us."
The peasants' cries have reached the castle, though it's questionable whether they've been heard. On a National Public Radio call-in program, a ticked-off citizen of Castine, Maine, (whose downtown P.O. was spared last year after cbs's This Morning took up its cause) chewed out Postmaster General Marvin Runyon: "Doesn't the Postal Service have some kind of obligation not to rip small communities apart?" Runyon, a former auto-company executive, responded with executive generalities concerning aging buildings and population growth, then effectively reversed himself. "It is not our business to be closing down small post offices," he said. "Our intention is to keep them open."