PEACH ORCHARD — This Clay County town was once a thriving farm community with more than 600 people, two grocery stores, a cafe and a school.
Gradually, the stores closed, the cafe went out of business and the school consolidated with Delaplaine, about 10 miles down Arkansas 90 from Peach Orchard. In 2006, even Delaplaine’s school disappeared after a merger with the Greene County Tech School District in Paragould.
Now, Peach Orchard’s 195 residents fear the last piece of the town’s dwindling identity — the post office — may be on its way out as well.
The brick post office on Southwest Elm Street is one of 28 Arkansas post offices considered for closure as part of cost-cutting measures by the U.S. Postal Service.
Although a postal worker tacked a notice on the post office wall Thursday that said the Postal Service had made a final determination to close the Peach Orchard Post Office, postal officials say there’s still an appeal process and the post office could remain open.
The Postal Service said it wants to close 2,000 post offices and mail-processing centers across the country by 2012 — from Bemidji, Minn., 100 miles from the Canadian border, to Lakeland, Fla.
“If this goes, there’s not much left,” said Donnie Steele, as he and his wife, Pat Steele, stopped at the Peach Orchard Post Office to check their mail. “We’ve just about folded up.”
The pace is slow in Peach Orchard. Trains rattle down the Union Pacific Railroad tracks in the otherwise-still town. Across from the post office, the tan cinder-block City Hall is closed in the middle of the afternoon.
“It’s quiet here,” Pat Steele said.
But sometimes an event drums up conversation. In the summer of 2007, farmers found the third of three large crop circles in a nearby soybean field. Townsfolk speculated then whether the intricate pattern pressed into the crops was done by aliens or pranksters.
Now the talk centers on the post office closing.
On Friday, a postal worker displayed a four-page report outlining the federal government’s reasons for closing the Peach Orchard Post Office. The report said the U.S Postal Service would save $47,396 a year by closing the town’s post office.
The letter sounds ominous.
“The Postal Service has determined to close the Peach Orchard Post Office and provide delivery and retail service by rural route service ...” the letter begins.
But Leisa Tolliver-Gay, a spokesman for the Postal Service in Arkansas, said the message doesn’t necessarily mean closure.
“It’s our determination, but it’s not a final letter,” she said. “We would like to close that post office and we address it in the letter. Headquarters [the U.S. Postal Service] will make the final decision.”
One determination for recommended closure is the revenue a post office brings in per day compared with its daily cost of operation, Tolliver-Gay said. Revenue is converted into hours; a breaking-even point for a post office open eight hours a day is to earn enough revenue to pay for eight hours’ worth of operation.
Peach Orchard, which is open eight hours a day, earns 1.5 hours per day, Tolliver-Gay said.
Another factor for closures are post offices with postmasters who have retired within the past two years.
“It’s a key factor,” Tolliver-Gay said.
The Alicia Post Office, about 40 miles southwest of Peach Orchard at the Lawrence and Jackson county line, lost its postmaster two years ago. It, too, is recommended for closure.
A worker at the post office would not talk to a reporter about the closure, but displayed a letter she received June 21 similar to the one at Peach Orchard.
If the Alicia Post Office closes, the letter said, the U.S. Postal Service would save $82,201 annually.
“It’s a real concern,” said Russell Barber, Alicia city recorder and treasurer. “We’ve put in a letter to the government to stop it. Our citizens are upset.”
If Alicia’s post office closes, residents will have to travel five miles to Swifton, which dedicated its post office to baseball Hall of Famer and former resident George Kell last year, or 14 miles to Walnut Ridge to buy stamps and mail packages.
Dell Mayor Kenneth Jackson is also worried about the expense of getting mail if the Dell Post Office closes.
“We don’t want it to happen, naturally,” he said of the Postal Service’s recommendation to close the small Mississippi County town’s post office. “But I think it’s likely to happen.”
He said it will cost the city $5,000 for an employee to drive to and from Blytheville daily to retrieve the city’s mail if Dell’s post office closes.
The post office is a source of pride and identity for the town of 250. A landscape architect designed the building in the late 1980s and it is the meeting spot for residents each morning.
“It’s where you say hello to everybody,” Jackson said. “Every morning from 9 to 9:30 people converge on it and ask how everyone’s doing, how the kids are, and all. It’s kind of a social meeting place.”
Jackson said the town’s quaint charm once led Gov. Mike Beebe to call Dell “Mayberry,” referring to the fictional North Carolina town in the television program The Andy Griffith Show.
Like the other post offices up for closure, Dell lost its postmaster to retirement in 2009. Jackson wished the Postal Service would have advertised the opening, instead of using interim and temporary employees.
“They say if they close Dell’s, it’ll save $52,000,” Jackson said. “But everybody in Dell will put up a mailbox. How much will it cost to have a carrier drive to every box every day?”
Donnie and Pat Steele are debating about putting a mailbox in front of their Peach Orchard home if the post office closes. They live on a road on the southern edge of town that runs along soybean fields. Tractors and farm equipment that use the road to access fields have hit trees in their yard and broken a water meter, Donnie Steele said.
“I know they’ll knock down our mailbox,” he said.
Along with Peach Orchard and Alicia, post offices that received the final-determination letters are: Bigelow, Board Camp, Gepp, Goodwin, Ida and Monroe. The other post offices considered for closure are: Boles, Caldwell, Canehill, Casscoe, Dell, Driver, Lawson, Montrose, New Edinburg, Ogden, Ozan, Parks, Pineville, Rivervale, Saratoga, State University in Jonesboro, Wideman, Willisville and Witter.
The Postal Service also recommended turning Hoxie’s post office into a branch of neighboring Walnut Ridge.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 07/04/2011