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"The Golden Triangle" Dobbin, Dacus, Montgomery Pony Express and Air Mail A newspaper report last week talked of the current and future status of the Dobbin Airport. James Price remembers when the Dobbin post office had "air" mail delivery. I can remember further back than James and recall when the Montgomery Post Office used Pony Express. My family lived on Spring Branch Road just across the road from where the present Tri Lakes subdivision is located. Only a dirt road came that way and it crossed "Rankin Branch" and at least three more "run-off" gullies that prohibited the Model T Fords or Model A cars from delivering the mail. R. I. Simonton rode a large brown horse with two huge leather bags in front of him, fastened by a hole in the center and hung over the saddle horn. If the mail was heavy, there was two more mail bags behind the saddle. He could not carry a large package, such as the orders many families, including mine, made to Sear’s and Roebuck or Montgomery Ward at Christmas. In that case, he left notice in the mailbox and a trip to town in the wagon was necessary. In the farming and tenant farming days everybody didn’t have a mailbox. Lots of the tenant farmers moved every year and many times the "mail rider" left mail for people he could not reach in the mailbox nearest where the newcomer lived. My grandmother Martin was a widow and moved around from one son’s home to another frequently. I have a letter she wrote to her son Will Martin in Navasota, telling that son she was worried about he and his family. She said she had received a letter from him but could not read it because my father, her son, had carried it around in his backpocket for a week. I am sure that letter sitting on a horse for a week under a two hundred pound man rubbed away any ink. The Simonton, then Martin Pony Express didn’t always deliver. James tells of the Air Mail" delivery in Dobbin which happened when the Mock store building, which housed the Dobbin Post Office was moved from the 1486 side of the present Johnny Geisinger home. This happened in 1984. Marie Rumfield, wife of "Dud" Rumfield was the Post Mistress. The building belonged to Leo and Mary Mock and was being moved to the present location of Mock Store at the intersection of Highway 105 and FM 1486. The Mock’s hired the well-known house mover C.N. Hales to do the job. It took several days or more to get the building up on wheels and since the building also enclosed the Dobbin Post Office and since the mail came daily and had to be dispatched daily, doing this daily job fell to Marie to see that rain or shine, in the air or on the ground the mail must be delivered. Marie was a very dedicated Post Mistress and her husband "Dud" Rumfield ( a member and descendant of one of the earliest residents and businessmen of the town of Dobbin) was determined to make the job as easy as possible for Marie. James has a picture of Marie at her job as Post Mistress, seated in the Post Office perched four feet up on the house moving trailer in one end of the Mock Store building. "Dud" stood on the ground below and Marie would hand mail down to her husband four feet below. Quite a few customers called their delivery "Air Mail!" James recalls that earlier years put the post office "downtown" between the two railroads, a part of Shannon’s Store (later Mocks), with Mary Shannon being Post Mistress. As I have already written, the Shannon family was one of the very first families in the Dobbin area, and was the founder of the well-known present day cemetery called Evergreen Cemetery. Before the advent of the two railroads, the post office was housed in the "Son" Mitchell Store. With the completion of Hwy 105 and the FM road 1486 being an all weather road, a post office with it’s own site seemed necessary and so about 1985 this became a reality. The present day Dobbin Post Office sits along Hwy. 105 just west of the railroad overpass. I a faint recollection of an attempt by the government to abolish the Dobbin Post Office, just as it was done in the Dacus community and then routing the Dobbin mail through the Montgomery Post Office. Typical of the Dobbin area residents was their reactions. Those residents mind their own business and are self-sufficient and only want what is rightfully theirs, but will "rear up on their hind legs as one!" When something threatens their way of life. The community got together and protested the death of their post office so loudly and vigorously. The powers-that-be backed down and so there is a designated meeting place, A.k.a. the Dobbin Post Office, with more than four hundred and eight box holders! Dobbin lost one of it’s best loved citizens, when "Dud" Rumfield, the behind-the-scene postmaster died recently. Retirement of their long-time Post Mistress, Marie Rumfield, their faithful friend and helper for many years. The town of Dobbin must be compared to the battery ad on TV. It just goes on and on and on. To be continued. |
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©Montgomery
County News, 2004 |
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