Premium ContentMouse over Home then click on Premium Content for information.A light snow Friday morning was beginning to form a slushy glaze on the sidewalk in front of the Colon, Neb., post office.
It wasn't yet slippery, but Frank Malousek, the officer in charge of the post office, was already out front spreading salt.
"You just want to make sure it doesn't get anywhere close to icing up," Malousek said. "We've got a lot of little old ladies walking in here."
As he shook salt from the bag, a retired farmer stepped from a truck and approached Malousek with envelopes in hand. Malousek told the man "I can help you" and walked with the man into the tiny post office, where Malousek stepped behind the counter to take the envelopes.
"It's a one-man operation," Malousek said.
Soon, the Colon post office will not even be that.
The U.S. post office in Colon, a village of 138 about seven miles north of Wahoo, is one of 11 in Nebraska that will soon close as part of the U.S. Postal Service's attempts to stop hemorrhaging money.
Three other villages in eastern Nebraska roughly the size of Colon will also lose their post offices: Ithaca, population 168; South Bend, population 86; and Nemaha, the big city of the group with 178 residents.
Nationally, thousands of post offices are being studied for closing.
Often the closing of a village post office is seen as the last nail in a dying community's coffin.
But that is not always true. And although losing the post office in all four of these towns is a blow to the pride of residents, and certainly a loss of convenience and pleasant mom-and-pop service, it may not be as devastating as you might imagine.
For one, to various extents, Colon, Ithaca, South Bend and Nemaha are already little more than bedroom communities to nearby larger towns.
Only one, Colon, had activity along its main street Friday morning, with residents and area farmers coming and going from the State Bank of Colon, as well as a nearby restaurant, the elevator a couple blocks away and, just off main street, the pet grooming shop.
"I'm guessing we're probably going to feel it the most," Dorothy Warfield said from behind the small counter in the Colon bank. "We have quite a bit of mail that needs to reach customers at a precise time. We'll do it. It's just going to be an adjustment."
For most, though, it will likely mean a drive of only a few miles to Wahoo or Cedar Bluffs, perhaps dropping off mail in Wahoo or Fremont, where many residents work; or, as Malousek said, "waiting an extra day once we all transfer over to being on the local rural route."
"People in the country have been getting their mail that way forever," he said. "People will survive."
To the southeast of Colon, between Wahoo and Ashland, is Ithaca, a sleepy village that makes Colon feel like a boomtown.
Indeed, one of only two people to be found working there on Friday was the clerk in the post office.
"Look around," said the woman, who asked not to be identified "because I'll be looking for another job soon."
"You can understand why we're closing."
Ithaca will just continue to be what it is: A cluster of homes in the countryside and residents who work and do all their business elsewhere.
"We'll just receive our mail like everyone else in the country," said Bob Wagner, a retiree who was outside snowblowing his driveway. "I can understand the need for cost-cutting. I can understand why this post office would close as part of that."
Farther to the southeast, nestled along a bank of the Platte River near Louisville, Neb., is South Bend.
Like Ithaca, South Bend, except for the post office employee, is dead this Friday.
But this is winter. In the summer, the area around South Bend is alive with people who own cabins and summer homes along the river.
I was surprised to see that the fairly modern gas station and convenience store in South Bend, usually active in the summer, is now closed.
"Somebody will probably buy that place," the clerk at the post office said. "When traffic picks up in the summer, that place should be able to make money for someone."
About 61 miles to the southeast is Nemaha, one of the state's oldest towns, located just south of Brownville and about 12 miles from Auburn.
Across from the post office is a small grocery store that should win some award for truth in advertising. It's called Nemaha's Only Stop.
Inside, a longtime resident and retiree — who would give only her first name, Margaret, "because I don't want to sound so awful in the newspaper" — was the only person in any of the four villages who was angry about the decision to close the local post office.
"It's ridiculous, it's stupid, it's unfair," the woman said as she walked from the store with a cup of coffee. "It's a stake in the heart of this town. Why us?"
The name of the grocery store would help answer that question.
Also, Frank Malousek, the postal officer back in Colon, said "our post offices were picked because there are towns nearby with post offices."
"If the office has a low volume and the people can get to another post office pretty easily, it's going to be on the chopping block," he said.
"The reality is pretty simple: The U.S. Postal Service is hurting; it has got to cut costs. It hurts to lose your post office. But for the most part, it's something you can understand."
Contact the writer: 402-444-1129, robert.nelson@owh.com
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