I’ve lived most of my life in small towns in pretty remote rural areas. Some were in red regions, some were purplish-blue—but every last one of them centered on the local post office. I remember years of picking up the mail from a little window in the postmaster’s living room. (If you called her the postmistress, she would tartly reply, “Uncle Sam can’t afford mistresses.”) Eventually, she needed her parlor back, to have room to work on her genealogy projects, so the community built a small freestanding building. Where I live now, the local post office takes up a third of the space in the only business in our town, a country store complete with potbellied stove and rocking chairs. It’s probably why we still have a store: if you’re there to pick up mail, you might as well get some eggs, too.