Mailbox Woes

I was reassembling the Sunday newspaper yesterday, plucking pages lodged against weathered corn stalks as I trudged across my neighbor's newly plowed cornfield for nearly a quarter of a mile, mud caking my Sunday loafers. Here and there, my scavenger hunt against the wind rewarded me with the discovery of an intact envelope, the occasional credit card offer or utility bill, or other such postal correspondence. I eagerly collected these little prizes. It was Saturday's mud-streaked postal delivery.

At last, my arms were stuffed with the crumpled remains of the weekend papers and all I could find of intact envelopes. I could spy no more telltale flashes of white across the landscape about me. I considered the likely possibility that some item of mail delivered to me may have been blown away into the next county and would never be recovered. I had a new understanding of the concept "lost in the mail." I slogged back to my driveway, to where I had discovered my mailbox blown over by the stiff wind, the contents dumped out, at the mercy of the breeze.

My beleaguered mailbox, what a sad year of woe it has had, three times it has been destroyed this year. Yesterdays collapse in the wind was just another in a long line of recent mailbox mishaps. It all started with the baseball bat assault. Joy riders going down the highway sent half a dozen mailboxes to box heaven, mine included.

After that injury was repaired, with a brand new box, the snowplow came by, crashed into the post and broke the box off along with the top of the post. I had to get a new box to fit the new post top. So, I was on my third mailbox when I left for my Peru trip.

While I was away in Peru, the second worst snowstorm in our history buried the place in snow. The snowplow took out the mailbox again, post and all this time. When I got home, I found the mailbox, attached to its post, lying on its side on top of the snow, with mail inside. Someone must have found it and left it there for me. This was a sad sight to see on just arriving home.

It is somewhat hard to fix a mailbox this time of the year, what with the ground being frozen and all. I jury-rigged something, but I did a lousy job of it because now I have the mail across the cornfield incident.

You know, I hate having to fuss around with the mailbox. I want to just have a mailbox. To just have it be there. Quietly sitting there, doing its job. I don't want to have to think about mailboxes. I just want to come home, get the mail and not think about the mailbox, ever.

Maybe that's why I have mailbox problems.