POSTAL RHUBARB
Pie Town residents dread closing of town’s lone post office
PIE TOWN — When Stephen “Uncle River” Kaufman looks out the door of his home, a one-room wooden structure smaller than some people’s walk-in closets, he is gazing into the rugged, untamed beauty of north-central Catron County.
“I’ve always liked natural places,” Kaufman, 70, said. “There were times, particularly in the winter, when I was upset and I’d get up and go out and look at the night sky and that would revive me.”
Kaufman grew up in Massachusetts, but in 1977, determined to live in sparsely populated places with long views, he hitchhiked to New Mexico. He has lived in Catron County since 1982, the last dozen of those years here in Pie Town,
a place of about 200 people, on U.S. 60, 22 miles northwest of Datil, 22 miles east of Quemado and a mile and a half west of the Continental Divide.
He has supported himself by teaching, two years at Western New Mexico University, and by writing fiction. He gets no Social Security benefits and lives simply on about $2,500 a year, growing lettuce, snow peas and endive in his garden and cooking on a woodburning stove.
He doesn’t have a phone or the internet. He gets his water from a well and his toilet is a hole in the ground.
But he does have electricity. On a recent day, he was preparing to mail off the payment for his electric bill.
“I can walk to the post office,” he said.
He can walk to the post office today. But not after Friday .
Surprise attack
A letter from the U.S. Postal Service, dated March 28, 2018, informed Pie Town Post Office customers that service at the post office would be temporarily suspended at the close of the business day this coming Friday because a maintenance inspection had “found the building unsafe and beyond repair.”
The letter noted that the Postal Service intended to relocate the post office to a “modular building” as soon as possible and would make centralized mailboxes available in Pie Town until the building was available.
But no timeline was given for the installation of the centralized boxes and no estimate offered for how long it would take to get a modular building.
For the time being, the letter noted, customers should pick up their mail at the Datil post office, 22 miles away — and a 40-mile-plus round trip from Pie Town.
“Twenty-two miles might not seem like much to someone sitting behind a desk, but it’s a long way for someone who has moved to Pie Town to retire and just uses their vehicle to drive around town,” said Anita Hand, a Catron County commissioner who lives in Datil.
Kaufman calculates that purchasing the fuel needed to drive his 1963 truck to Datil just once a week to pick up mail would cost him 10 percent of what he lives on.
Nita Larronde, a Pie Town resident since 1980, wonders how many times she will have to drive almost 50 miles to Datil and back to find out if something she is expecting in the mail has arrived.
Shannon Donnelly, the Pie Town volunteer fire department’s assistant chief for medical operations, is worried about how the change in address is going to affect the department’s state and federal licenses for medical supplies, including controlled substances.
Karen Bingham, who retired to Pie Town 23 years ago, depends on the mail to get needed medications, some of which require her signature.
“I often don’t have transportation,” she said. “Someone would have to take me to Datil.”
Bingham said residents were caught off balance by the short notice.
“I can’t believe they are doing this surprise attack on us,” she said.
Commissioner Hand wonders what the rush is all about.
“They have known for years that the building is falling apart,” she said. “Why couldn’t they get the modular in and then move the post office into it. They should have their ducks in a row before they come into Pie Town and say, ‘Sorry, we are shutting down your post office.’”
Plain and simple
John Friess, corporate communications manager for the U.S. Postal Service’s western area, which includes New Mexico and 20 other states, said he appreciates the Pie Town community’s concerns.
He said the centralized or cluster boxes, when installed, will ensure mail delivery in Pie Town and eliminate the need to drive to Datil. He said, however, the intention is to put a new post office in Pie Town.
“Unfortunately, the current facility did not meet our standards for safety — not only for our employees, but also for our customers,” Friess said. “But work is underway, in progress, to establish a new location for postal services in Pie Town, plain and simple.”
The Postal Service has set a May 9 meeting at the Pie Town community center to address residents’ worries.
Some Pie Town residents are worried that, despite Postal Service statements to the contrary, this process is the first step in making a transition to cluster boxes permanent.
“The concern of the residents is that this is the beginning of the end,” Hand said. “They’ll put the cluster boxes in and say, ‘Hey, you know, these are working just fine.’”
Even if the cluster boxes are a temporary fix, residents are uneasy about them. Many don’t consider the boxes secure for mail with sensitive, personal information; for medications; or for money.
The Postal Service has advised customers they can leave checks or money in the boxes to pay for stamps or the mailing of packages. But Commissioner Hand said they might as well put up a neon sign inviting thieves to break into the boxes.
“I am reluctant to believe anything (the Postal Service says) because they are not putting any timelines into writing,” Hand said.
Friess said a timeline at this point would be pure speculation, that finding a proper post office location in Pie Town is not easy.
“We are looking at it, but it has its challenges” he said. “It’s not a big town.”
Getting bigger
Pie Town sprouted out of a gold- and silver-mining claim filed by Clyde Norman in October 1922. It got its colorful name from the pies Norman became famous for baking to supplement the income from his mining and other business interests.
It’s not a big town, but it has been getting bigger. There were less than a hundred people living here 20 years ago and about twice that now. Ranchers, teachers, road workers, hunting outfitters and people doing business on the internet live here.
In the middle of nowhere as it is, Pie Town has never been an easy place to reside. There’s no gas station. You have to drive to Datil or Quemado for fuel. For anything more than the most basic purchases, you have to travel 63 miles north to Grants; 72 miles west to Springerville, Ariz.; 86 miles east to Socorro; 94 miles northwest to Gallup; or 160 miles northeast to Albuquerque.
Even so, people settle here for the serenity, for a lifestyle they can’t find most other places.
Donnelly and her husband Sam Palahnuk, chief of the volunteer fire department, moved here from Los Angeles seven years ago.
“We fell in love with (Pie Town),” Shannon said. “We have chickens, we have horses, we chop wood. You can’t find rural in Southern California anymore. When we go back (to Los Angeles) now, I cannot stand the traffic, I cannot stand the air, I cannot stand the noise.”
A slice of history
Residents say Pie Town has become a mecca for astronomers attracted by some of the darkest skies in the country. Tourists, drawn by the town’s flavorful history, will stop at the Pie-O-Neer for a slice of pie, attend the annual Pie Festival in September and — at least through Friday — mail a card postmarked at the Pie Town Post Office.
Over the next two months, scores of hikers trekking the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail, 3,100 miles from Mexico to Canada, will come through the town.
Two trail walkers, Mike “Thumper” Winkle, 53, from south Louisiana, and Paul “Waterbug” Wright, 35, of Northern California, were in Pie Town last week.
Winkle said post offices along the trail are essential to hikers who can’t carry all they need for a 3,100mile walk. They send boxes with food and replacement gear to post offices along the route.
“If you put ‘hiker’ on the box, a post office will hold it for 30 days,” Winkle said. “Or you can call them and they will bounce it to the post office in the next town.”
But after Friday, at least for a while, there will be no post office at this point on the trail. And hikers can’t send supply packages to cluster boxes.
“It would be tragic for Pie Town to lose part of its infrastructure as it is growing,” said Kathy Knapp, owner of the PieO-Neer. “It’s never been easy for the homesteaders to be here. We know that. But the Post Office and government should be helping us, not making it more difficult to live here. This is Pie Town. This is America.”