Cooperative Living February 2017 - 34

Clockwise, from upper left: The old Love Post Office; interior of Gordon Everitt's store with post office slots at right;
Postmaster Gordon Everitt and wife, Pearl; Andy Arnold, early rural route carrier; homemade, hand-lettered post office sign.
Center: 1942 postmark of Love, Virginia.
system of sorting, all done by heart.
The Love office served folks in the
village as well as the surrounding areas of
Campbell's Mountain, Chicken Holler and
Reed's Gap. A simple hand-lettered sign
announced that this, indeed, was the Love
branch of the United States Postal Service.
In its 50 years of existence, Hugh
Coffey and Gordon Everitt were Love's
only postmasters and there was also only a
handful of rural route carriers who served
during that time. The carriers, in the order
they worked, were Peter Coffey, F. E.
Campbell, Columbus " Lum " Hatter and
Andy Arnold.
Of these men, Andy Arnold carried the
mail the longest. For 37 years, Arnold
made the long trip to the Lyndhurst
station for the incoming mail pickup.
Since he lived in the Love area, he would
take the outgoing mail to Lyndhurst at
6 a.m. and return to the Love Post Office
around noon. When the weather turned
sour in the winter months, he left his
Model A Ford at home and rode his horse
or walked up the last steep grade to the
post office. The old phrase, " Neither rain,
nor sleet, nor snow can keep the postman
32 | Cooperative Living | February 2017
from making his appointed rounds, " was
probably dedicated to hearty souls like
Andy Arnold who carried the early mail.
The Love Post Office was classified as a
fourth-class letter office and the
postmaster was paid by the number of
cancellations that went under his rubber
stamp. Around Feb. 14, an influx of cards
and letters arrived, many of them
valentines going to sweethearts with the
" Love " postmark stamped on them,
lending a romantic air to mail going out
that particular day.
In 1939, a big change occurred
when construction of the Blue Ridge
Parkway was underway and severed the
tranquility of the quiet mountain people
who had lived their lives isolated from
the onslaught of progress and the eyes
of the world.
Many did not believe a roadway could
be carved out of the rocky mountainsides,
but once the work began, a lot of men
found employment that provided their
families with a regular paycheck. This was
a real boon for people who up to that time
made a living farming. But with the added
income came a restlessness of spirit to be
Lynn Coffey published the Backroads
newspaper for 25 years and is the author
of five books about the Appalachian people
and their disappearing culture. Her books
may be viewed on her website at:
backroadsbooks.com.
www.co-opliving.com
more connected to the outside world,
and young people began leaving the
mountains, seeking jobs elsewhere for a
seemingly better life.
When the Parkway came through the
Love area, the post office had a rush of
new business as a delivery point for
workers on the construction crews. But
by the middle 1940s, the demand for
rural post offices began to decline with
the population, and in 1944 the
postmaster general came to Love one
last time to collect the government stamp
and postal scales that had served the
community for 50 years.
When he left, he closed the door on an
era where a man could be called in from
the fields with a whistle and folks could
get their letters and their hearts filled ...
with LOVE. 

http://www.backroadsbooks.com http://www.co-opliving.com

Cooperative Living February 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Cooperative Living February 2017