slowly

If your life needs a bit of slow down time, I have a plan.

My town once was 8,000 when I first remember. Now it is about 30,000. There were maybe 50,000 people in the “valley.” Now that number is ten times more at least.

Some things have changed. I remember going downtown and it was all bustling with business: Wards, Sears, JCPenny’s, Woolworth, Idaho Department Store, Alexanders (named after the first Jewish governor in the United States: Moses Alexander), Safeway, Albertsons, Model Market and so on.

None of those are in the down town any longer, several are no longer any where.

But our post office goes on and on. The building is the same size, and I swear they have the same number of clerks.

Of late, there seems to always be a line 10 or 12 patient patrons deep. Once you step in the sandstone framed doors, time stops. You can use your credit card to buy stamps, and there are posters of the latest stamped hero.

But there is the same number of clerks, I am sure. They are in no hurry. They take their time. Not always friendly time, but slow time. Suddenly one clerk may put an “out to lunch” sign up and disappear.

One has always intrigued me (and not positively). He has worked there for a couple of decades. His answers to everything were remote, like the were uttered by a machine. I have driven 10 miles to a nearby town to another post office to avoid him, but in his middle age he is becoming a bit more human.

Oh well.

This time they had a sheet of Alzheimer’s stamps, at least there was one under the glass. I was going to get one, and I do support any kind of research, obviously, but then I remembered how much Miriam fights the idea that she has the disease.

The only things that have changed is the size of the line, and the cost of postage.

Oh, and postage goes up in May the clerk told me.

I bought "forever" stamps, just in case.