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Show After Father'd picked up the mail for us and dozens of other settlers at Lund post office, run errands for members of our community and had his lunch at the little hotel, he'd start back. Sometimes he had such a load of mail and items our store didn't yet stock he would walk much of the way to save Frank. That horse was a cheerful toiler but, after all, only one horse on a trail that ranged from sandy to muddy, up bill and down, made the surrey a weary burden for him. In heat and cold, sandstorms and rarer rains and snows, Father traced that route with no compensation of any kind, or expense money. His being away every weekday slowed down development of our homestead and threw extra tasks on Mother. Sometimes in December and January he'd arrive home after dark, dog-tired. Evenings he'd work completing interior arrangements in store and dwelling quarters. That struggle went on for eight full months during which we maintained a post office unofficially. Homesteaders could come almost any time day or night or Sundays and have their mail handed to them from their box in a wall of pigeon-holes Father'd built of plywood. Each pigeon-hole had over it the name of some settler or sheepherder who'd chosen Nada as his address. Father and Frank made that 28 mile roundtrip every weekday for a total of at least 200 trips. At last in late February 1914 the red letter day dawned: the Postal Department in Washington, D.C., notified Father that his application for a post office for Nada had been approved and he had been appointed postmaster. Nada finally appeared in the national listing of post offices. Father received a large map of Utah with "Nada" printed on it, there beside the SP, LA and SL, looking as prominent as many another town up and down the line. We tacked that map on the inside of the main door with a proud circle around the town name. Since this was in the humblest classification, Fourth Class, because of small population, Father would receive no compensation except the "cancellation." This meant the total value of the stamps he cancelled on letters and packages mailed from |
