delivery route

One of the pleasures of having an Etsy site is mailing off orders.  I love post offices, and the one in Orange is especially nice.  And now that I live in town, I get to bike there regularly, with the parcels in my handy bike baskets....

 past the neighborhood cats....

 wrong way up (haven't gotten in trouble yet) the ramp in front of the library and behind the courthouse...

 over the crackly pavement...

 under the tree....

 that grows beside the church where my aunt & uncle got married...

and into the post office!  It doesn't look like much from the outside, but inside it smells wonderful... the sweet smell of ink and newspapers!

A man I met in line told me there is an identical post office to this in the small town he grew up in in Pennsylvania.  I should've written down the name of the town, but I didn't, and I've forgotten it.

Maybe one day I'll rent one of these boxes.  My grandma has one here, and when I was little, I used to come collect the mail here often with my Grandpa.  I've never had my own post office box key before.  There are tall wooden tables for finishing up addressing, packing and form-filling, and even a very old scale for weighing.

How many palms do you think have been on this doorknob over the years?  I have also forgotten to ask when this post office was built.  Sorry.  I will try to remember to ask next time I go.

And the upper far wall is decorated with a mural painted in 1937 by Arnold Friedman.  He titled it "Upland Pastures" and was paid by the Treasury Department under FDR's New Deal.  Not only is the ambiance of the post office lovely, but the ladies that work behind the counter are always kind and helpful.  One of them has two daughters that I used to baby-sit for... and she is so thoughtful that she even surprised me with occasional letters when I was in graduate school in Ireland.  She got the address from a card my grandma was sending to me.  These are the joys that come from small-town life!  I also really like spying on the set up behind the post office windows... canvas carts, wooden cubby shelves... I'm sure I wouldn't appreciate it as much if I worked there full time, but as an outsider it looks inspiring and inviting, and I would love to have my own workshop someday with similar tools and atmosphere.