Victor Paulson Remembers: Rural Free Delivery---a Revolution for Evansville

(Victor Paulson, 95, is a longtime resident of Evansville and shares his memories of Rural Free Delivery, the "woodshed" and the "three holer." Click on the post for the audio memories of Victor on the days of Rural Free Delivery.)

Two of the most momentous events in American History were the invention of the automobile, and .......Rural Free Delivery. We are still dealing daily with the impact of these developments although it is not always clear to us.

Daniel Boorstein, one of the famous historians of American History, in his book, "The Americans, The Democratic Experience"(1973) describes the transformation of American towns and villages such as Evansville by the impact of RFD, Rural Free Delivery. On page 132, he says:

"This was the least heralded, and in some ways the most important communications revolution in American history. Now for the first time it was normal for every person in the United States to be accesible by cheap public communication. For the rural American (more than half the nation's population by the census of 1910). the change was crucial. Now he was lifted out of the narrow community of those he saw and knew, and put in continual touch with a larger world of persons and events and things read about but unheard and unseen....But at the price of dissolving some of the old face-to-face communities.

RFD led to the combining of post offices and the abolishing of many of the little fourth-class post offices which had given their name and their focus to hundreds of village communities."

Thus, as the Observer sees it, it is not accidental that the boom of architectual development occurred in Evansville from 1910 to 1920 and then when the full impact of RFD and the automobile was felt....it was over. Farmers did not have to come to town to shop at the Grange Mall. Folks did not have to commute to Chicago by rail, they could drive there. In short, the whole world changed. It has not been the same since.

Click on the post for the thoughts of Victor Paulson, 95, on the impact of Rural Free Delivery. Enjoy.