No Stamp of Approval for Replacing Tiny Post Offices : New Mexico: Postal Service intends to replace ‘inadequate facilities.’ But some customers take issue with that description.

The rhythms of life do not vary much from day to day, year to year, out here 70 miles south of Albuquerque, so the recent news brought some anxiety to the town’s 800 contented souls.

The government’s going to close the post office.

They’re going to open a new one, all right, a “facility” just a block away. It is described as “modular,” which sounds to many of the 800 people here about as impersonal as a ZIP code.

“Just a cold place with no charm,” says one resident, Cynthia Coffee, 46. But, then, Coffee was peeved a year ago when the government required post office boxes, and a wall separating customer from postmaster.

“Armida used to get your mail for you before you were even in the building,” Coffee explains.

Armida is Postmaster Armida Crespin. She represents the third generation in a family that has provided the postmaster in Lemitar for as long as there has been a post office here.

Crespin was born in the 85-year-old tan adobe house just off Lemitar’s main road that was deemed good enough to house the post office for 43 years.

Nonetheless, it is one of about three dozen small, rural post offices throughout New Mexico that the U.S. Postal Service says need to be replaced because of what the agency terms “inadequate facilities.”

She says she will always cherish the memories the little adobe house evokes of her customers, her mother, her childhood. These can’t be replaced with modular efficiency.

Crespin’s grandfather, Pedro Vigil, built the house himself in 1910. He eventually added a room in front for a little grocery store that also served as the post office. Ten years later his daughter, Ramona Gonzalez, added separate space to the store for the post office and became postmaster.

“My mother juggled five little ones and the post office,” Crespin says. “We were in and out, and I’m sure getting in her way. But it was convenient. It was in her own house and she could cook dinner.”

Other towns in New Mexico have similar feelings about their post offices now marked for closing.

San Ysidro, a village of 350 about 100 miles north of Lemitar, is an example. Postmaster Viola Garcia’s 80-year-old adobe home, which has served as the San Ysidro post office for 36 years, also will be replaced by a free-standing modular building.

As far as she is concerned, Garcia says, having the post office in a room of her old adobe home is more a convenience than an intrusion. Although the office itself lacks a bathroom and other comforts for the customers, Garcia says it is handy for her to walk from her living room to her job.

“I don’t ever have to get out there and fight the cold weather, the heat,” she says. “And there’s no wear and tear on the car.”

The adobe building is something of a San Ysidro landmark. Over the years, it has served as a school, a bar and a general store.

Garcia says that, just as in Lemitar, the post office in San Ysidro has been a family concern for years. She took over in 1973 from her mother-in-law, Benita, who started as postmaster in 1959.

Garcia says her husband, Robert, who is the San Ysidro mayor, and her children never complained about the post office’s being in their home.

“It was kind of nice for them,” she says. “Their mom was home when they came home from school.”

Here in Lemitar, Crespin says both the town and the workload have grown since her mother held the job for 22 years.

“When Mom ran the post office, it was a lot smaller and it didn’t have a whole lot of rules and regulations,” she says.

Crespin took over in 1974. She does everything from sorting the mail to mopping the floor. But she says she manages to keep up because there is not enough room to leave any work on the side for too long.

“I liked working in my house; it was convenient,” she says. “It has a different feel because it is in a home. The people around here have thought of it as being a friendlier place.”

As for “inadequate facilities,” that might depend on the judgment of the customers as well as the Postal Service.

The small adobe structure’s front entrance is a screen door which, admittedly, squeaks. But beside it is an outdoor bench that Crespin’s father made of Coca-Cola crates 40 years back. Here, customers sit and read their mail before going back to their cars in the dirt carport.

And others besides Coffee have complained about the wall separating the customers that was added to accommodate the new boxes (and is now littered with firewood-for-sale postings).

“People complained,” Crespin says. “They say they enjoyed watching me sort the mail, and I used to like handing it to them.”

Some residents, such as 77-year-old Cristanto Cordoba, a retired farmer, have not yet become used to the changes that have taken place in Lemitar since he was a young man four decades ago. He says he misses the days when he and other immigrants would pick chiles on the local farms to support their families in Mexico.

Back then, people would play horseshoes and talk in front of the post office all day long, he says. “We were like a big family,” Cordoba says. “Before, everyone used to come together. Now, people just come and go.”

Roberto Maese, 58, another customer with a sense of nostalgia, says he, too, will miss how the post office harkens back to older ways.

“The move takes away from the old hometown feel,” he says. “It’s been kind of a gathering place.”