As That Crow Flies

I have been organizing my correspondence this week: parsing out what to keep, what to save, and where to put it. This is not unusual, as I have spent my whole life as a letter-writer, which in turn makes me a letter-receiver. There are all kinds of methods for sorting one's mail: as a child I used plastic sleeves in three-ring binders, as a teen I collected beat-up shoeboxes, in my twenties I switched to coffee-cans and cigar boxes, and now that I've coasted over the hill, I have hoity-toity archival museum-grade storage containers. These boxes are each meticulously ordered, divined into a system of personal mythologies, geographies, and devotions.

I am doing a bit of time-traveling and dipping into the dangerous box where I keep lost love (both real and imagined), unless/until they are found and shifted into some other fluid category. In 2008, J is moving from one prairie state to another prairie state and his letter is about farmers measuring time and distance "as the crow flies" because you can see your destination coming when you live on level land. The shortest distance between two points is not only visible, but often evenly navigable in the midwest, especially for those traveling at an unmotored pace. High plains states like Kansas and Nebraska speculate in similar measurements: county boundaries are drawn with the county seat being equidistant from each edge community, postal routes are established as a one-day's ride on horseback, schools are attended by students within walking distance. Settler expansion and westward land-grabbing is mapped by the establishment of local institutions: a courthouse, a post office, a school, a jail. Occupation, communication, education, incarceration; all with their own capacity as social fulcrum and dysfunction.

If you look at post office locations on a map you get a chance at the birds-eye view and you can travel as that crow flies: the shortest distance between two posts is also the most navigable. Population density and difficult terrain are made visible by the frequency of post office stations. An ever-lengthening record of post office closures highlights the deprioritization of rural communities on a policy level. Rural postal service is a jackrabbit you can track all across the internet: beginning with the radical implementation of Rural Free Delivery in 1896 and picking up pace with the first murmurings of rural disenfranchisement on PBS News Hour in 2011. In order to really grock the oscillating geography of postal networks, Cameron Blevins put together a spatial-historical dataset tracking three centuries of post office locations in the contiguous United States.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy launched an aggressive austerity-efficiency-consolidation plan for the USPS in 2021, and has again called for slowing delivery to non-metro centers in the wake of the presidential election. A short drive on the information superhighway reads like a litany and gets heady fast: Postal Service considers rural mail slowdown after election (Washington Post), Postal Employees Voice Major Concerns as USPS Begins Implementing Its Delivery Consolidation Plan (Government Executive), Thousands Of U.S. Post Offices Lose Money. Should Some Be Closed? (NPR), Some rural Americans worry about USPS cuts, closures (Marketplace), Trump’s Attack on the Postal Service is a Threat to Democracy—and Rural America (The New Yorker), USPS is about to charge you more for slower mail. Here’s why. (Washington Post), USPS Workers Rally For Congressional Aid: 'We Just Honestly Can't Afford To Take Anymore' (WBUR), Post Office closings isolate small towns and poor (NBC News), We Won't Be Silenced (American Postal Workers Union), What’s the Big Deal About the Post Office? (Stanford Magazine), Consolidation Threatens to Rip ‘Service’ Out of Postal Service (Save the Post Office), Postal workers union sounds alarm about USPS staffing, service and election preparedness (PBS), USPS proposes changes to save $3 billion per year, starting in 2025 (NPR), and The US Mail is Not For Sale! (APWU). In September of 2024, the USPS released a startling infographic of service cuts during a webinar: end-of-day collections will cease in every area more than 50 miles from an urban Regional Processing and Distribution Center. This slowdown in service will handicap approximately 23,000 of our nation’s 31,000 post offices and a whopping 47% of the population the USPS serves. City delivery will get faster and the rural routes will be less resourced. Lines of communication are drafted, drawn, and erased by the availability of a postal service: a new rural cartography delineated by a shared communications commons.

The remaining rural postal network serves as a living map of relationships, historical narratives, and landscapes across the Midwest. The post office is "the visible form of the Federal Government to every community and to every citizen. Its hand is the only one that touches the local life, the social interests, and business concerns of every neighborhood."^*Rural communities rely on the post office for more than just mail: it is a critical space for community news, both by word of mouth in the conversational space of the counter, and through bulletin boards for local announcements. The post offices of middle America have a unique tenor and improvisational architecture that reflect the cultural vernacular environments they serve: local planter boxes and benches out front maintained by community volunteers, bunting and window murals to match the seasonal holidays, grain elevators and water towers bending into the frame, long low-sloping roofs to better manage snowfall.

It is a Tuesday in May 2012 and I am driving across the country sending postcards to a different lost love and picking up my letters via general delivery at one-man post offices in out-of-the-way but interesting places. I’ve just finished eating a tomato sandwich on the post office lawn and am ambling back to my car calculating the daylight-to-open-hours ratio for being able to fetch my mail in the next time zone. Beside the gas station, the biggest headline on the front page of The Independent Record reads “USPS Plan to Spare Rural Offices,” and I don’t have enough spare change for the newspaper machine, so I read above the fold and through the box window about community organizers turning the tide against the slated closure of eighty rural Montana postal locations. This is the precise moment when I start paying attention. This is the summer I become a post office portrait photographer.

The photographs start as record-keeping—a way to map where I had been sending and receiving mail while on the road. Like any practice of attention, the visibility begets care, the care becomes concern, the concern shifts into advocacy, and advocacy creates more attention. God Bless the USPS is now an archive of thousands of my photographs, a lifelong research project about community correspondence, and another reason to keep writing letters.

In my rural social fabric of the Palouse prairie, the neighbor-to-neighbor relationship of postal services are even more frank, fragile, and indispensable. The small-town postmaster acts as communications mediator, familiar with the name, face, and peculiarities of everyone at the counter and in the zip code; while rural mail carriers act as communication lifelines, some of the few neighbors that know and interact with everyone and every road on the receiving end of a delivery. A portrait of a post office can serve as a portrait of a people and a portrait of a place, illustrating both the institutional and intimate relationships sustained within and throughout their use.

It’s late summer 2024 and I’ve been photographing rural postal networks for twelve years—bringing me full circle to the places and portraits I made at the very beginning of God Bless the USPS, on an eight-megapixel pocket camera that was always gummed up with beach sand. After a decade of perambulating west Michigan, I now spend my summers up in Benzie County and walk to check my post office box in Elberta in the early afternoons, after the lunch hour but before Jerome starts closing up around 2:00pm. He is a musician and I am an artist; he works for the post office and I send mail every day. Our conversations are modest but friendly, and I stretch my questions out over many days and mail drop-offs. This year, I make a new portrait of the Elberta post office because I’ve started doubling-up on the archive; it’s nice to see what’s different over time. This is how I realize that this post office no longer houses a copy machine.

There are postmasters and there are city clerks, and between the two of them you can get in touch with almost anyone in a community. I am trying to figure out who carved the massive wooden eagle mounted above the entrance of the post office in neighboring Frankfort. It has survived the past eighty Michigan winters outside: painted two-toned when it was installed in 1940, painted monochrome when I first photographed it in 2012, and now sporting three shades in this year’s portrait. For all that care and maintenance, I can’t find a record of the artist anywhere. I meet Emily Kay Votruba of the Elberta Alert at a neighborhood potluck and she gives me some names of folks who usually “have a lot to say about a lot of stuff.”

Andy Bolander, the community historian, walks over to sit in the sun on the front porch one morning and lets me ask him every question I can think of about the history of postal systems in Benzie County. I’ve met him once before, at the county museum gift shop, but I finally realize that we are neighbors in Elberta and I go past his place every day on my way to the beach. He tells me the story of the sinking of the Ann Arbor #4, a car ferry that delivered mail, goods, and passengers to Betsie Bay. He tells me about “halfway houses,” places where mail could be passed along for pickup before formal postal systems were established. He tells me that there was an amusement hall with an underground bowling alley that also served as the post office in the early days of Frankfort. He has no idea who made the wooden eagle sculpture but he makes a list in a spiral notebook and promises to follow-up with any leads.

Two of the people on my call sheet work at the Frankfort post office so I swing by after picking up groceries to see if I can catch a conversation in the late afternoon lull. The clerks are happy to chat and nobody knows who made the eagle. I mention that I’m working on an article and the whole place goes quiet. They pass me to the postmaster, who is having lunch in his office, but comes out to tell me that postal office employees are not permitted to talk to the press and any questions from the media must be directed to the regional headquarters, three hours away in Grand Rapids. He apologizes about the situation, and gives me a number to call, and wishes me luck. I leave a voicemail but never hear back.

The statute on conversational research does not extend to postal retirees. Tim Flynn talks to me about all of this during a phone call to a landline on a Sunday afternoon. He spent 33 years working in post offices: serving across rural Michigan in Traverse City, Frankfort, Copemish, Thompsonville, Elberta, and his home-place of Benzonia. "I always say, you get to know everyone in a community pretty well. You have a chat with everyone that walks in that post office door. You know the families, the parents, the grandparents, the summer visitors. You watch the kids grow up and come to the post office on their own." He tells me about parents bringing in their new babies and using the postal scales to take their weight, because it was easier to get to the post office than the doctor's office. He tells me about a letter carrier in Copemish that saved two people's lives during a hard winter on her rural route and still made it back to the office in time to get the day's mail out.

"When you move post offices, you start over. You start making a new map of another 500-600 people you're going to become friends with." I am hanging out over the lunch hour with a postal contract worker in Elberta who agrees—he explains you can't help but know everyone in town when you are the one sorting, sending, and delivering their mail. Customers come with different needs: penpals wanting hand-canceled stamps, community leaders sending Every Door Direct Mail, online shoppers for their packages, small businesses with deliveries, readers for their newspapers, writers for their stories, social butterflies to say hello. The community sets its own pace of communication, and as most things rural, the post office stays nimble and resourceful, maintaining a subversive and mutable disposition despite all standardization.

It is autumn up north in 2024 and I am driving to make a post office portrait at the end of a good day’s last light. I’ve spent the week sorting files instead of sorting letters and the tracking of time and spatial memory has me off my gourd and back in the maps. This post office is beside a gas station, and in front of a liquor store, and across from a concrete teepee, and next to a circle of faceless hand-made garbage bag witches with their PVC pipe arms lashed together in sleeping dragons. They are holding fast; so am I.

So too does the post, by the work of the one million many hands it takes to pass a note across geographies. In Benzie County, the crow flies in concentric community circles rather than straight lines. Through history and mystery, the deer trail turned to footpath turned to backroads turned to a rural delivery route that connects person to person rather than place to place. I’m out on this long walk across the country. It’s nice to see what’s different over time.

Post Offices of Benzie County

Benzonia

Population: 551

The community called Benzonia started as an educational Christian colony in 1858, and is home to the oldest post office in Benzie County. In 1859, "the post office was moved from Herring Lake to Benzonia by water and at one time in the course of the trip postmaster, postoffice, mail and all got wet when a wave on Lake Michigan upset the whole outfit." As was typical of the times and fluctuating populations, the post office location leapfrogged from building to building across town. To this day, observers can still find outlines of letter slots on downtown buildings that formerly served as the post office.

Because of its history as a colony project, the community operated without developed transportation infrastructure during its early years: "...great inconvenience was experienced in consequence of the absence of roads...The mail route from Traverse City to Manistee by way of Benzonia was only a trail or foot-path marked by blazed trees. In summer the mail was carried on horseback; in winter on a sort of sled, not unlike the dog sledges in use in some arctic countries. It consisted of a single plank, eight feet long and a foot and a half wide, turned up in front like a sleigh runner. On this the mail bags were securely fastened by straps passing over them. The plank was drawn by a single horse, scarcely sinking into the snow and running over fallen trees without difficulty. The driver usually ran behind, but when fatigued sometimes rested himself by riding."

︎ The Traverse Region, Historical and Descriptive: With Illustrations of Scenery..." ; Chicago: H.R. Page & Co.; 1884
︎ Improvements at Benzonia Post Office Recalls Many Incidents of Early Days. Clipping, Benzie County Historical Society.
︎ History of the Benzonia Post Office. Benzie Record, Nov 8 1962. James Milliron, Benzonia Postmaster

Elberta

Population: 329

Elberta is one of the smallest villages in the smallest county in the state of Michigan. Earl Moyna started his career as a letter carrier in 1920, on an Elberta route of a standard postal length: as far as a man on horse could reasonably travel in one day. This 30 mile route provided mail service to over 100 families. Patrick Moyna recalled going out on the mail route with his father in a 1996 edition of the Benzie County Record Patriot: "Patrons often waited by their mailbox to buy stamps, to tender some choice bit of gossip or to hear the "dirt" from farther up on the line. Some left fresh baked-goods in the box and, on the coldest days of winter, Mrs. Brandt would leave a small thermos of hot, spiced brandy to warm us up. There was an oft-repeated ritual when we would stop: "Say Earl, who's that fella with ya?" "Oh that's my star boarder." Then they'd both erupt in laughter. I must have been 6 or 7 years old before I learned the meaning of that old Irish chestnut referring to a free-loader such as a do-nothing brother-in-law.”

︎ Benzie County Record Patriot, Nov 27 1996

Lake Ann

Population: 273

The first established rural mail routes were mapped via person and landmark rather than established roadways or specific addresses. Stanley Beckwith, of Lake Ann, tried to summarize an early mail route from Lake Ann in a book of local history: "The route went up cemetery hill. First stop was Louis Hermantle, then Lakeview School to Dan Willards, George Linkletter, Bob and George Barber (Bob lived where the Hawks later lived), Huffine's on the left corner, Nick Nelson, and then Burnt Mill--Silas Woodcock's home (Silas lived between the two Woodcock lakes) to Mike Doyle, to Cripes. Take a road to the left...turn left at Almira and deliver and then backtrack to Almira school...at the corner turn left but deliver to the Whites, Keumins, Brooks, Fullers...Again turn left to Stevens, turn right to Yeltzers, Melmorrey, Roblec, Greenbriar School...past Fred Goin's place and curve around...turn right at the corner and deliver Beckwith, Hersey, Haywood, Somers and then to the corner...and back to the post office."

︎ Lake Ann--Small But Friendly: A History of the Village of Lake Ann located in Benzie County, Michigan. Emily Traavis Brosier. Bayside Print, 1997

Honor

Population: 337

L. K. Nicol started carrying mail in the winter 1915 on a twenty-five mile route; he used a specially-built stove-heated box, mounted on skis and drawn by horses. By winter of 1924, he had installed caterpillar treads on an old Ford chassis and rode in a covered box. During his long tenure as a postal worker, he "prescribed for the ills of both patrons and animals, called the doctor, brought groceries, matched thread, burned hornets nests, read and wrote letters, cut their fences and helped himself to their gasoline and sometimes even put their mail in the wrong boxes." He received many gifts over the years, including "butter, eggs, cream, meat, chicken, fruit, vegetables, money and even jewelry. One patron gave him a possum, but the family refused to eat it."

︎ L.K. Nicol ends Mail-Carrying Career. Clipping, Benzie County Historical Society, #20381

Thompsonville

Population: 451

As a village, Thompsonville grew around a railroad junction of two major lines: the Chicago & West Michigan and the Frankfort & Southeastern. The Railway Mail Service was the primary operator in this community, as the region's mail was sorted by mail clerks on the trains working 10-12 hour shifts and then dropped off at the diamond junction. Like most towns in the aftermath of the Civil War, Thompsonville historical records make mention of their one-legged postmaster.

︎ Thompsonville, A History. Bryce Gibbs. University of Michigan, 1976

Frankfort

Population: 1,252

As Benzie County's only city (all else are designated as villages, townships, census designated places, or unincorporated communities), Frankfort stewards the largest delivery network and a sizable post office to accommodate it. The historic building was constructed in 1940 with federal funds from the Treasury Department and houses a post office community mural, one of the New Deal artworks organized by the Treasury Section of Fine Arts. Artists were employed to work with communities to create murals that were specifically representative of their place for installment in local institutional buildings. Henry Bernstein painted "On Board the Ferry Car (Ann Arbor #4, Feb 14 1923)," which depicted car ferry workers struggling to secure the railroad cars while battling a ferocious winter gale on Lake Michigan. Car ferries were a critical link in Michigan transit, and the Ann Arbor #4 was a steel twin-screw crosslake passenger and railroad ferry responsible for carrying people, cargo, railcars, goods, and the mail across the oceanic lake.

︎ The Living New Deal Project, Department of Geography, University of California, Berkeley CA 94720-4740

Beulah

Population: 313

Beulah's half mile township sits on a strip of land that was underwater for millenia: exposed during an engineering experiment gone wrong when Crystal Lake was mistakenly drained into Lake Michigan by county leaders trying to construct a water-shortcut for shipping. Though small in population, Beulah's downtown post office locations served thousands of seasonal visitors due to the smelt boom at the turn of the century, the world famous Cherry Hut, and growing resort communities.

Aral

Population: 0

Now the site of one of the most popular swimming beaches on Lake Michigan, the ghost town of Aral rose and fell with the boom-and-bust of the timber industry in west Michigan. The two-story sawmill employed folks from all over the area and the post office served as the communications hub for about 200 residents, including a community of fifty Odawa/Ottawa families that would come to Aral each winter to work in the lumber mill.

︎ Wayside Marker, Remembering Aral. Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. National Park Service.

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An short-form version of this piece was published as part of “Rural Cartographies” for Barn Raiser Media in December 2024. All historical photos courtesy of the Benzie Area Historical Society. All post office portraits are selections from the archives at God Bless the USPS.

^*Postmaster General John Wanamaker, United States Post Office Department, Report of the Postmaster General. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1889