Places: Longview, Texas

The town where my parents grew up and the story of P.O. Box 344

The Longview Post Office, built during the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration and open since 1939, holds a special place in my family’s history.

The town, about 125 miles east of Dallas, is where my parents grew up. The post office at 201 E. Methvin Street opened the year before my father was born. My grandfather was the assistant postmaster there until 1964, the year before I was born.

Like many families, my grandparents used a post office box rather than home delivery. Even after he retired, my grandfather would dutifully drive the two miles or so every day or two to get the mail from P.O. Box 344. After he became ill, my aunt or another family member would get the mail for my grandmother, who never learned to drive.

The post office, like many government buildings, was part of FDR’s Works Progress Administration that sought to employ workers during the toughest days of the Great Depression. The WPA program, which was in place from 1935 to 1943, put more than 8 million Americans to work building schools, hospitals, and other government facilities. Most of the buildings have a “Depression Moderne” style that blends Art Deco and neoclassical elements.

In addition to the post office boxes, which are the same as I remember them from my youth, a massive oil on canvas mural titled “Rural East Texas” remains in the lobby. According to the website East Texas History, Thomas M. Stell Jr. painted the mural in 1942 “to celebrate the history of farming in East Texas and demonstrate how mechanization changed the agricultural industry.”

Stell, described by the website as “a master portraitist who strove to connect his work with the viewing public,” was the WPA’s state director of the American Index of Design and a professor at San Antonio’s Trinity University.

Top: The house (far left) where my dad grew up. Bottom: The home where my mom lived starting in 1948.

As a child, I spent extended time every summer in Longview with my grandparents but have only been back a handful of times since 1989, the year my grandmother died. Each time I return, the town has changed as growth has moved to the north. The older, south side section of town where my dad grew up has fallen into decay. The post-World War II era Pine Tree area where my mom grew up has changed as well, though not as much.

Remarkably, the downtown post office remains the same, a step back in time.

The headstone of my grandparents in the Longview cemetery.

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Note: One of my goals as a parent has been to take each of my adult children to East Texas to see where my parents grew up. Five years ago, Nicholas visited Longview and Kilgore. Last month, I took Ben on a similar journey that also included a stop in New London, a small town in Rusk County.

These three places, all towns greatly impacted by the Texas oil boom, are full of stories — some personal, some societal. Next up: New London and the story of the nation’s deadliest school disaster.

Places: Kilgore, Texas