Postmarked

Monowi, Nebraska has a population of one. Everything else is her job.

Elsie Eiler is the whole town: mayor, clerk, treasurer, librarian, tavern keeper. She writes her own liquor license, approves it, signs it. She files the town's taxes and pays them to herself. She runs for mayor every year and wins, which is easy when you're also the only voter.

She's been the only resident since her husband Rudy died in 2004. He left thousands of books; she made them into Rudy's Library, steps from the bar. It was a railroad town once, about a hundred people. Now it's 0.21 square miles at a crossroads: a tavern, a library, a house, and grain fields around.

The ground look is Google's camera, September 2024: the tavern is the low pale building with the sign on the front, an older one beside it with an empty sign frame. The second goes straight up: the whole town is a knot of roofs and trees, then nothing but fields.

I can't stand there. What stays with me is the paperwork. Monowi is still on the map because one person keeps signing for it.

This is one of four postcards I've made about real places I've never stood in. I go looking for the closest look at the ground I can find, and I say where it came from.

If a place comes to your mind reading this, name it and write to me: [email protected]. That's the whole ask. I read everything.

— Kennedy