Weekday
The weekly feature page of the University Daily Kansan
NOVEMBER 29.1978
The postmaster of Idana, Emerson Kemp, has raised the flag in front of his small post office for the last 32 years. This December, Kemp is retiring and the post office, which is owned by him, will close.
Idana 67453 Rests in Peace
IDAAN-When Emerson Kemp retires, Idana just might die.
Kemp has been the postmaster here at zip code 67335 for 32 years, and he says that at the end of this month he will be in charge.
And the opinion of most of the locals is that when Kemp goes, the tiny post office—the only local government service in the city—and the town will expire. The death is being prompted by natural forces, and geography and economics are playing a big part. Idaho has been dying for 20 years—an inland town that once bloomed but now
Kemp and his nelly Nelle moved to town in 1946 from a farm on the outskirts of Idana. Kemp, now 63, took the postmaster's job at the tiny fourth-class post office. It was here that Kemp has been a bank and a plumbing shop.
But if Kemp's office doesn't open after Dec. 31, when he retires, people in and around Idana will have to give their mail to a rural route carrier. They say they'll get used to it, just like they took it in stride when everything else was closed down and boarded up.
Nellie Kemp says that earlier in this century, Idana had a lumber yard, three restaurants, three grocery stores, two churches, a dry goods store, an Odd-fellows lodge, a big hotel, a doctor's office, a meat market, a garage, a railroad station, a grain elevator, a livery barn and a blacksmith shop.
Only the post office and a Presbyterian church remain. There is an insurance office in IDana but it does not have a post office.
Mib Meet is idana's unofficial teacher, a farmer, a Sunday school teacher and a college graduate. The 72-year-old Meek, who wears bib overalls, takes a census of idana when he can't sleep.
The last time Meek could sleep, there were about 65 citizens in Idaho. He figures there are 25 houses left, four of them vacant, and the church. Meek smiles when he mentions the white wooden church.
"I count people instead of sheep," he says.
At the town's in the World War I years, Meek says, there were probably 225 people in Idaho. The town was young then. It was started in 1882 when the Leavenworth, Kansas and Western Railroad laid out
the town limits with George Howland. Howland's wife was named Ida Howland, aughtough, had a wife named Mary Howland.
During the Depression in the 1930s, Idana grew in population because, Meek says, people liked life better there. The dust bowl never included Idana, although the crops suffered from drought.
Idana began dying in the 1940s, when people started moving to war jobs and the service, Meek says. In the 1950s a lot of the old-time merchants died. Their businesses were abandoned and moved to the墓地 on the west edge of Idana.
Then ida suffered a double stroke of bad luck from which it couldn't recover. In 1854, the bank—which made it through the Depression while several nearby banks folded—closed. Then in 1960 the United Pacific Railroad shut its station and abandoned its Millford Reservoir was under construction.
Without the railroad, Idana, which isn't on a highway or river, felt the pains of an incurable disease for a small inland town—isolation. The pains came during the promising growth of the local water system, which was born in 1952 with a township bond issue.
People thought that with all important, life-giving water the town would survive. But the water went for crops on the farms bordering the town. The number of animals under faucets with cool, clean well water dwindled.
Meek lamentes the imminent post office shut-down in his educated, historic logic: "I kind of hate to have Idana off the map. If the post office closes, that's where Idana is going."
Pauline Meek, his wife, views the office as an "unwarranted luxury." She looks to God while she is on her way.
And Kemp, who says he got used to seeing businesses and railroad loads, takes it as it comes
"It everything goes," she says, "we still got the church."
"It's like anything else," Kemp says. "It's sad to see a little town grow up, then . . ."
He didn't finish the sentence. He just slammed his hand down with a bang on top of the gas heater in front of him.
The post office has long been a gathering place for people in idana, especially after all the other businesses closed. Here, Buster King and I camp enjoy the warmth of the office and conversation.
Photos by Randy Olson
Story by John P. Tharp
the loss of the post office in idana is the last of a series of businesses that have closed down over the years, continuing a culture of neglect in city to nearly a ghost town. Kemp laments the loss but looks forward to collecting his pension. The rest of the town's residents are happy, but, as Kemp says, there's no place to go to tell dirty jokes.