January 4, 2017 Article

The Old Coot Mourns the Neighborhood Mailbox. AGAIN!

By Merlin Lessler

This holiday season brings with it the anniversary of another memorial, though a somewhat insignificant event, the disappearance of the mail box on the corner of Front and Ross. It’s gone, but the cement pillar it hung from remains, crumbling and leaning 15 degrees to the west. It looked so forlorn that I hung a Christmas decoration on it and am repeating the article written seven years ago, as a testament to its demise.

A day of infamy in 2009:

She’s gone! You could see it coming. She knew too much, too many secrets. Two burly guys came by in the afternoon, wrestled her to the ground, threw her in the back of a van and took off. Now we just have a stone monument, slightly askew, marking the spot where she proudly stood. The little blue mailbox on the corner of Ross and Front was taken from us. Ripped out of the neighborhood. Ripped out of our lives. No longer efficient, a victim of changing times.

I don’t know how long it was there. They don’t keep records on that sort of thing. I asked postmaster Dave Clark. He didn’t know. He just said that it wasn’t used very much; some days there was nothing in it, some days just a few letters, never more than a handful. One neighbor said it was there when he was a kid. Another thought some sort of mailbox had been at that location for 100 years or more. I know for sure it was around to collect letters from loved ones sent to soldiers in Europe, Africa and the South Pacific, fighting in the war, the big one, WWII. “Dear Billy, I hope this finds you well. We’re praying for you. The scrap drive was a big success. We collected 100 pounds of copper. Dad ran out of gasoline coupons so we didn’t get out to the farm to see grandma this week.”  If only it could talk. What stories it would tell! But, it is no more. Modern technology made it obsolete and lack of activity forced it into retirement.

A few neighbors used it faithfully, several times a week. Now I watch them walk down the street to mail a letter in a box that isn’t there. They stare dumbfounded into the empty space for a minute or two, wondering, “What the heck?” It sat outside my kitchen window, in a direct line of sight from my perch at the counter, a perfect set up for a nosy old coot. “There’s Mrs. So-and-so,” I would yell to my wife. “Must be they are back from Florida.” Or, I’d report, “Mr. Been-around-a-long-time just mailed a letter. He was walking pretty well, no limp. Looks like he’s fully recovered from his hip replacement surgery.” It was more than a blue chunk of metal. It was the neighborhood “watering hole,” a place where we caught up with each other, a place where we exchanged snippets about the grandchildren, the latest round of aches and pains, and tips on where to get the cheapest gas in town. It was more than a mailbox. And, we miss it.

It’s where we put our letters to friends and relatives; it’s where we paid our bills and filed our income taxes, back when everyone did their own, back before IRA’s, 401K’s and an endless list of rules made it impossible for anyone but a CPA, back when the instruction book was wafer thin, not the 82-page monster we have today. Electronic filing, electronic bill payments and e-mail put our mailbox out of business. It’s a done deal! It’s gone and there is nothing I can do about it. Except complain! And that isn’t getting me anywhere. Everyone I complain to says the same thing, “GET OVER IT!” 

Comments, Complaints? Send to – mlessler7@gmail.com