AREA POST OFFICE ONE OF THE FEW OF ITS KIND

The Old Mill Store and Post Office sits within sight of Bollinger Mill.

Erma Nunn, right, jokes with Andy McIntosh of Marble Hill. McIntosh is one of two rural carriers who pick up and deliver mail from the Burfordville post office.

Nestled in a hollow of woods just off Highway OO, the little village of Burfordville has long been known for its covered bridge and the water-powered Bollinger Mill that sits alongside.

Both the mill and bridge have survived the passage of countless years and each stands as one of the few remaining examples of its kind anywhere in the United States.

But within hearing distance of the rush of the Whitewater River passing over the mill's dam sits another example of an increasingly rare institution -- the village store and post office.

In the back corner of Bill and Erma Nunn's white frame gifts and collectibles shop, the Old Mill Store, is the Burfordville Post Office. Erma is Burfordville's postmaster and has been for the past 22 years. From a small, L-shaped room with one service window, a mail slot and a drop box out front, Erma sorts mail for 283 homes on two rural routes. The little post office also serves 45 post office box customers and two people who have their mail sent "General Delivery," in care of the post office, and who retrieve their daily mail from the service window.

Only four such combinations remain in the Bootheel -- in the Poplar Bluff area towns of Shook, Briar and Gatewood and at Cascade, near Flat River. Such post office and store combinations -- even the country stores themselves -- are becoming increasingly rare throughout the nation as the U.S. Postal Service has begun to house its small town post offices in modular buildings which resemble mobile homes.

Erma Nunn's job engenders a close relationship with her customers. Many come to the store for stamps, to post a parcel, pick up mail from a post office box or to take care of other postal business and over the years, Nunn has come to know many of the Burfordville area's people. Being the only business in the village makes the Old Mill Store and the post office a center of the community, she says.

"People are interesting and that's all there is to it," said Nunn. "Over a period of years, people on the farms around here have been in and you get to know them and begin to get interested in their lives and when their kids graduate and what college they're going to and what they're going to do after they graduate.

"You don't want to be in this business if you don't like to be around people and don't like to be helpful," she said.

A typical day for Erma begins at 7:45 a.m. when bundles of the area's mail arrive at the Burfordville Post Office. The postmaster begins sorting the mail then and about 45 minutes later, the first of two rural contract carriers comes in to get the mail for her route. The second carrier comes later in the morning. Once these routes are done, Erma places mail into the slots of the 45 post office boxes and prepares out-of-town mail for transport elsewhere.

Although it's small, Erma's post office offers all the same services as those in Jackson or Cape Girardeau or New York City for that matter. All but one. You can't apply for a passport at the Burfordville post office. Then again, people from around here like to stay close to home.

There are a few services one probably can't get in New York City or Cape or even Jackson. Erma Nunn explains that one couple her post office serves, both school teachers, ask that Erma Nunn leave a message on their answering machine when a package comes in for them. That way, they'll know to pick the parcel up after school.

"That's as handy as all get-out," the postmaster said. "If we could do all of them that way it would be alright."

Another elderly customer often calls upon the Nunns and other Burfordville residents to pick up few grocery items for her.

"One day the post office was being audited and while that was going on, the lady came in and asked if we would get her some groceries if we went to town," explained Erma. "She had a pretty long list and started naming things off and I'll bet that girl who was doing the auditing thought this was the only post office in the country where you could bring your shopping list in and get it filled!"

Nunn and her husband Bill first moved to the area from Illinois about 35 years ago when Bill was named district welder for the natural gas pipeline system that runs through the area.

Coming to Missouri from her native Illinois was a tough move for Erma, who hails from Decatur, Ill.

"I think I cried for six months when we moved because it was the farthest I had ever been from home but I eventually got myself straightened out and apologized for being such a pill," she laughed.

Because Bill liked to take long drives on the weekends in order to make himself more familiar with the area, the Nunns had visited Burfordville several times after they moved to the area and fell in love with the village and its mill, gravel roads and huge shade trees.

"Burfordville is not far from where we were living on Highway 72 and I just fell in love with it," said Mrs. Nunn.

In the early 1970s, the Nunns learned that Burfordville's postmaster and storekeeper, Phyllis Dockins-Lewis, was retiring and selling both her store and her home in the village.

"When I saw that [Lewis] was retiring and selling her house, I thought, 'Now there's an opportunity for us to get off the highway,'" Nunn recalled, explaining that the home she and her husband owned at the time was located on a hazardous spot along Highway 72. She had witnessed two accidents at the site and was ready to move when the store went up for sale.

Bill and Erma bought the store in July 1972. Lewis continued on as postmaster until her retirement in late September 1972 and trained Erma to serve as postmaster. Erma was named officer-in-charge of the Burfordville post office on September 28, 1972 and was sworn-in as full postmaster in April 1973.

"I've been here ever since and I enjoy every bit of it," said a smiling Erma Nunn.

By the time the Nunns purchased the Burfordville store, it had already suffered the fate of many of the nation's country stores, having succumbed to competition with supermarkets in nearby Jackson and Cape Girardeau. In 1972, the Burfordville store building served primarily as a post office and sold only cigarettes and candy.

However, townspeople encouraged the Nunns to resume the sale of groceries and with the meat case, scales and the shelving remaining from the grocery operation, the Nunns began selling bread and milk, lunchmeat and sodas along with other grocery items.

The same factors that forced many of the nation's rural stores out of business eventually ended the Nunn's grocery venture. Even though supermarkets were several miles away, they had greater buying power and could offer better bargains than the Nunn's grocery. Erma said wholesalers offered no buying discounts to smaller stores and seemed more interested in supplying larger, supermarket accounts.

The Nunns ended the grocery operation in the mid-1970s and Erma -- who describes herself as "an artist at heart" -- turned the store into a gift shop with sodas and candy bars.

Even though you can no longer get a Moon Pie, an RC Cola, or a plug of Kentucky Twist, you can still grab a chair, or an upturned wooden crate, gather around the stove and spin a yarn to anyone who cares to listen, Many of the locals still do. Saturday mornings are a good time to find someone holding forth in the front room while Erma sorts the mail.

"In the wintertime, especially on Saturdays when many of them aren't working, they like to come in and trade information about someone who is sick or a new person in town and then we have politicking and talk about the government," Erma said. "It's really fun to listen to some of them."

Among the best of Burfordville's yarn spinners was the late Bud Sides, whose favorite seat, a well-worn metal lawn chair, still sits near the stove.

"Sometimes I wish I'd had a tape recorder to record some of the tales that Bud Sides told," said a laughing Erma. "I could write a book."