Postal Identity Theft??

Olustee Post Office

The end of last month not only ushered in a new year, but for me and many residents of Olustee, it ended an era in that we lost our post office.  Our post office was not one of those beautiful new buildings you see in larger communities, nor was it a stately historical building converted to distribute mail.  Our most recent post office was originally constructed as a voter precinct, and then a shelter was added so it could also be a fire station.  This location was preceded by other locations which all were destroyed by fire, but I digress. The Olustee Post Office was a "contract" branch of the Sanderson Post Office, which allowed rural communities to have a less costly postal operation.  Apparently it wasn't "less costly" enough.

Checking mail for the last time in Box 56.

Olustee box holders have now been switched to an existing rural route from Sanderson.  In the process we lost our own Zip Code, 32072, and our community name with the US Postal Service.  Our address now includes our 9-1-1 street address and "Sanderson, FL 32087".  But, I live in "Olustee".  Sanderson is ten miles down the road.  Go figure.  Now, I'm not saying that poor little Olustee is the only community suffering from "postal identity theft", but, hey, the stuck pig squeals the loudest, right?  And we are the ones being "stuck" right now.  We now join the ranks of our fellow county citizens in Taylor, Baxter, and other not-so-easily designated locations.

A new era begins.

Anyway, I now have a beautiful, not-so-stylish but functional mailbox on a short little post in front of my house.  I'm learning that that was the easy part.  The hard part is letting everyone know of the address change.  This is made more difficult when you consider mail received by my ministry comes from, well, everywhere!  I think I'm getting a headache just thinking about it.

So, should you need to mail anything to me or James Croft Evangelistic Association, please send it to:

5214 Main Street

Sanderson, Florida 32087-2524

United States of America

And, just to make it more challenging, I'm phasing out my home telephone number.  You will find the proper number to use on my website's contact page.

You know, they say hindsight is 20-20, maybe I should have bought some of that "identity theft insurance."  8-)