You just might be a redneck...
When we moved in to our new home at Pure Water Hollow in 1993 we did not like the mailbox that was there because it was old and dented and rusty. You might say it was a "redneck" mailbox. We purchased a brand new mailbox and we were proud to put our name and address on it with the nice stick-on black and gold letters.
It was not long, however, when the Malevolent Mailbox Maniacs struck, who are dedicated to the downfall of eastern Kentucky mailboxes. They have no respect for the United States Postal Service!
We awoke one morning in 1995 to a smashed in dent on one side of our beautiful mailbox! I straightened the dent the best I could, but then it happened again the next weekend! I began to notice that almost all of the mailboxes for miles up and down the road had been bashed in. Some had actually been decapitated from the shoulders of their posts and were completely absent!
The pattern continued during subsequent weekends. Each time our mailbox was struck, I smoothed out the dents the best I could and added as many reinforcing nails that the post could hold.
Something clearly needed to be done, but I had no idea that I would be the one to do it...
It was on a Friday night, if I recall correctly. Since it was about 2:00 a.m., I guess it was actually Saturday morning. It was more common for us to stay up late back then and we happened to still be awake this early morning. We had just turned off the lights but had not yet gone to bed when we heard a motor slow down followed by the BLAM of our mailbox being hit by a club or something. We could tell the vehicle was traveling south from the sound of the engine.
Our house is about 150 feet away from the road and our 500-watt floodlight reaches out to the end of the driveway and lights it up like it was day. We turned the floodlight on and in just a few more seconds we saw a pick-up truck with people in the back slow down at our mailbox and clubbed it again! They had turned around just down the road and come back to hit our mailbox on the other side! I could not believe that they did that with our house lights on and the floodlight shining out to the road on them!
Their boldness concerned me.
I loaded my double-barreled 12-gauge shotgun, and my wife and I decided to go out to the mailbox to examine the damage. The shotgun was just for some security and peace of mind since it was so late and I wasn't sure what was going on exactly. When we heard a vehicle coming from the direction the pickup had just gone, we stepped behind the branches of a maple tree that was near the mailbox. Back then the tree was small enough that it acted as a light screen from the road. We could not believe that the vehicle was slowing way down as it approached our mailbox! What audacity, to turn around and come back a third time all within 10 minutes!
Sure enough, it was a pick-up truck with about four guys riding in the back of it with sticks and baseball bats, and believe it or not, they slowed to almost a stop and let our mailbox have it again!
This was when we jumped out from behind the tree, me with the shotgun leveled at the four heads in the back of the truck, and my wife with the blood curdling war whoop of, "WE'VE GOT YOU NOW!!!" as only she is capable of screaming!
We were about 10 feet away from them! I let off one of the barrels of the shotgun with a deafening roar, aimed just barely above their heads. I'm not sure what they screamed, but the truck almost ran off the road as the driver floored the gas pedal. I then shot the other barrel above the truck just for good measure as it sped away. The boys in the back were on their bellies in the bed of the truck!
I do not advocate violence (usually). But a message needed to be sent to those vandals that smashing people's mailboxes was not the healthiest form of recreation. It just so happened that we were in the right place, at the right time, with the right shotgun, to deliver that message.
Perhaps we scared some sense into them, hillbilly style!
To the best of my knowledge, no one on our road had another mailbox smashed after that night. I never did find out who those malevolent mailbox maniacs were, but I would like to hope that they all settled down and are now upstanding, respectable members of our community!
The sad thing is, I never replaced that beat up mailbox. I guess I was half-afraid that as soon as I bought a new one, someone would come along and smash it. (Or maybe I'm just a redneck at heart.)
We eventually got used to having a decrepit mailbox and back a few years ago when the country was experiencing those bombs in the mail we were ahead of the game. The U. S. Post Service recommended that patrons remove the door of their mailbox because the trigger for the bombs was when the air rushed in when you opened the mailbox. Shucks, the door to our mailbox had fallen off years earlier, so we were not worried!
My wife and I had both grown up with a giant mailbox at our homes, and we always thought that the next mailbox we got should be a large one. No more packages rubber-banded to the outside of the box and no more damaged, folded magazines crammed into the mailbox.
My aunt had given us some Lowe's gift cards for Christmas (thanks) and Lowe's had just the mailbox we wanted. Simon and Christina are often the ones who go out to get the mail for us and they seemed to be the most excited about getting a new one. Simon was my helper for this project. Here he is with the new mailbox next to our old one. I think you can tell that it is larger than the one we used to have!
Here we have Simon working on getting the old one off, while keeping an eye out for on-coming traffic. We have had so many pets hit out on this road that we are a bit nervous when we are out on it for very long.
Simon was a good worker on this project!
It was late by the time we finished, but the new mailbox was up, and it looks good. It is no longer a “redneck” mailbox, but it is more functional.
We are hoping that there is not a new band of Malevolent Mailbox Maniacs patrolling our part of eastern Kentucky, looking for nice, new, functional mailboxes like ours. I really don't want to have to teach the “do not bash mailboxes” lesson to a new generation of vandals.
The way things are going now-a-days in our society, they would come back the next day… Not with baseball bats, but with lawyers!
1 comment
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Marcella on January 13, 2007 at 8:31 am
I love the mailbox story! And the new box looks very nice.
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