PHOTOS BY DAVID LOWE Mary Brewer sells stamps to Billy Taylor at the Izoro post office. Although owner Florene Blakley has stopped selling gasoline and groceries, the post office remains a gathering place for rural residents who live between Lampasas and Gatesville. The conversation began long before Mary Brewer handed Billy Taylor his stamps, and it continued for minutes afterward. For nearly a half-hour on a sunny, quiet Thursday morning, Ms. Brewer and the rancher chatted about friends and family, the price of cattle feed and Taylor's hay crop.

The transaction represented equal parts business and friendship. The bonds Ms. Brewer and her mother, Florene Blakley, have formed with their customers have kept the pair active during Mrs. Blakley's 47 years of running the Izoro post office.

"We have wonderful friends and neighbors," Ms. Brewer said. "We've met lots of people from all kinds of places -- and still do."

Established in 1888, with J.H. Upton as the first postmaster, the Izoro post office moved 11 years later to its current location, on what is now Farm-to-Market Road 1690.

Florene Blakley has run the Izoro post office since 1961 and still stores documents in a 100-year-old safe. Mrs. Blakley also used to sell groceries and gasoline at the building on Farm-to- Market Road 1690. In addtion to his duties as postmaster, Upton picked up mail in Gatesville before traveling a day and a half back to Izoro -- called Higgins Gap at the time -- for distribution. He would spend one night in Izoro before returning to Gatesville to restart the mail cycle.

"The people then were getting their mail every other day, which was great back then," Mrs. Blakley said.

Now a tiny branch of the Copperas Cove post office, the Izoro building helps serve rural residents who live between Lampasas and Gatesville, Ms. Brewer said.

"It's kind of the center for anybody who wants to buy stamps, pick up mail or mail a package," she said.

Mrs. Blakley, who began running the post office in 1961, operated a grocery store, complete with a meat counter, cheese and an ice cream box, in the postal facility until she no longer could compete with supermarkets.

"At one time," Mrs. Blakley said, pointing to the sides of the post office, "these shelves were completely full with groceries. There was a booming business."

The flood of soldiers to Fort Hood during World War II brought especially high traffic to the post office, Mrs. Blakley said. Hunting seasons also increased sales, she recalled.

Thomas Lancaster delivered goods from Adamsville, and the Izoro store received bread every two days. Mrs. Blakley also hauled some groceries to Izoro. With pumps filled from an underground tank, she also sold Texaco gasoline for several years.

Along with providing staples for Izoro residents' kitchens, the post office and store provided a community gathering place. Before the paving of FM 1690, customers tied their horses and buggies to a hitching rail near a blacksmith shop across from the store.

Long after automobiles supplanted horses on the road, the hot coffee Mrs. Blakley brewed for customers still gave patrons a reason to linger in the store.

The opening of a Piggly- Wiggly and other grocery chains in Lampasas eventually drew customers away from Izoro in search of lower prices, Mrs. Blakley said.

"Of course, I don't blame them," she said. "It's progress, I guess, even if I don't like it."

Grocery and gas sales now have ended, and mail transacations in Izoro also have slowed, but Mrs. Blakley and her daughter have preserved Izoro's postal heritage. A century-old safe inside the building holds stamps and guards documents, and the Izoro women continue their work in the building that united their town throughout the decades.

"This is what kept our little community together," Ms. Brewer said.