Off the Cuff / My Other Journal

Mailboxes

We don’t get much traffic on our street, which is a quiet residential loop with inhabitants consisting mostly of senior citizens. Except for a family with teens where the loop takes a sharp curve, there aren’t any children and noise, so each passing vehicle is heard and noted easily. Early in the morning and late in the evening, however, we have quite a bit of pedestrian action with elderly walkers on aspirin therapy and pet owners walking their dogs. I am one of those walkers, although unfortunately, sans dog.

A specific thing one notices about each house as one walks by is its mailbox. I have observed this: the showier the house, the fancier is its mailbox. Our mailboxes stand guard, with varied colors and shapes, in front of each house on varied poles, some firmly grounded in cement, others just stuck through the sod to sway in the wind.

My husband and I had never paid any attention to our humble black metal mailbox that came with the house when we moved in during 1993; although at one point, I felt that the box on top of the pole needed changing since the bottom of its metal had corroded and some rusty holes had formed, but because we couldn’t figure out how to fit a new box on the old stand, and because of our clumsiness, we didn't dare to attempt to put in a new pole, we gave up on that project and received a refund on a new box that had made a needless trip from the store to our house.

After the hurricanes of last year, we temporarily lost our trusty old mailbox on account of a queen palm falling over it and the wind carrying it away; the next day, however, our son found it on a neighborhood lawn a few blocks away, wounded though still usable. He brought it back and just stuck, haphazardly, inside the soggy ground, its crooked metal legs as far as they would go, which seriously shortened the height.

I still wouldn’t have comprehended the size of the problem this created for our mailman, if--one day when I was weeding a flower bed--I hadn’t witnessed the anguish on his face when he tried to place the mail in the box. When I ran to his aid, he complained--and rightfully so--, “This is lower than the regulation height.” It was time for a new box.

Right that day, my son and I went to Home Depot and bought a mailbox with a stand. My objective was to get this unpleasant task over with as soon as possible, and my son’s aim was to choose an easy-to-put-in pole. He chose a thin plastic pole and I chose the biggest mailbox. Wrong combination!

Now, as our white brand-new mailbox tilts its deferential head toward the street’s gravity and sways from side to side with the slightest of wind, I watch it to find solace in the fact that, at least, we have complied with the mailbox-height regulation.