Too often people forget to buy stamps before leaving on vacation. I lunched at Sara Jane's Bakery with tour planner Maude Williams and advised her to go next door to the Munroe Falls Post Office for 20-cent stamps. On a trip into Michigan with the Firestone Park Prime Timers, I found a fully-automated postal store at the Ohio Turnpike's Erie Island Plaza. The turnpike has always had a blue mailbox at its plazas. The now-closed Stuckey's off Interstate 71 had a box for mail that got a Marengo postmark.
Local postmarks are an endangered species.
You have to go inside a post office to get one. People are surprised when they post mail at the Breakers Hotel at Cedar Point and have it canceled in Mansfield. Now, postal stores are being installed in many locations. This month, Akron opened a new Fairlawn Branch at Fairlawn Town Centre and a vastly-remodeled central office on Wolf Ledges Parkway. At Main, ornate bronze boxes from as far back as the 1930s have been replaced by a bank of rental boxes with aluminum doors.