Treat: Fill & Download for Free

Question: “How do you keep your roadside mailbox from being knocked down?”Oh! That story!Some years ago (OK. It was decades.) my wife and I moved from a town house in Chicago’s South Loop Dearborn Park neighborhood, where the mailman put the mail through a slot in our door, to a home on a large lot in the Deep South that had a rural mailbox on a decorative post next to our driveway.Late one night I heard a loud car and then BANG! followed by the sound of metal clattering on concrete. The next morning I noticed that there was no longer a mailbox on my property but just a post. And that was no longer vertical. The mailbox, or what was left of it, was found some distance away in the gutter.OK. I go down to Home Depot, buy a new mailbox, straighten the post, and install the thing…with my name on it and nice new numbers.About a week later, late on a Saturday night, loud voices, then BANG! Clang. Clang. Clatter. Followed by other BANGS as porch lights turn on down the block.Another trip to Home Depot.So I decide to stay up sitting on my porch in the dark on Saturday nights. I want to know who is doing this. Did not have to wait long. Down the street comes this white trash car filled with rednecks. At each mailbox the driver swerves to the curb and the idiot in the passenger seat yells “Yeee -Haaa”, leans out of the passenger side window and bashes the mailbox with a wooden baseball bat. They are using the weight of the bat and the speed of the car to bash mailboxes right off the posts.I am by now sick of buying mailboxes for these crackers. This is war!In one of those catalogs “For Those Who Have More Money Than Sense” I find Godzilla’s Mailbox. This thing is made of 3/16 inch thick boiler plate. It is put together with the sort of welding one expects to find on bridges. It weighs more than my boat anchor. The door alone weighs more that two normal mailboxes and closes with a resounding clang. And the advertisement for it shows a D-6 Caterpillar Tractor rocking on the mailbox without denting it! Like Mr. Toad of Toad Hall I shout, “Whatever the price is, I MUST HAVE IT!”With joy and anticipation I see the UPS man staggering up to the door with my mailbox which is only slightly less heavy than an anvil. I go down to Home Depot looking for a post…a REAL POST, a pressure treated 6 x 6 about eight feet long. I am going to bury half of this bridge timber in the ground…surrounded by 300 pounds of concrete! I bolt the mailbox to this timber with three 8 inch long ½ inch diameter stainless steel carriage bolts. THIS THING IS NOT GOING TO MOVE.Saturday night I wait. Smiling. I know how the Devil must feel on a really good night. I am going to get those crackers. I can hear them coming down the street…their idiotic cries of “Yeee-Haaa” mixed with the crunch of smashing sheet metal. The only thing missing is the banjo playing background out of the film Deliverance.They get to my mailbox. “Yeee-OWWWW!!! FUCK!” The bat swung from the speeding car breaks when it hits Godzilla’s Mailbox, smashing the redneck’s hands and arm back into the car doorpost, cracking in half, leaving half of a baseball bat and some splinters on the road, and an injured cracker screaming “FUCK!” repeatedly in the disappearing car..the emotional intensity in his voice fading in the distance compensating for his limited vocabulary.On Godzilla’s Mailbox the paint was not even chipped. I felt really good.

Here’s what you have to do:Go to the store and buy the best dog treats you can find, get raw steaks if you want, as long as it’s something irresistible to those dogs.Whenever you leave your house, bring the food with you. When the dogs start barking, go over to them and let them sniff the food through the fence. Then feed it to them once they are pacified, thereby classically conditioning them to be happy every time they see you instead of angry.Watch as your neighbors come to terms with the fact that not only have they lost their power over you, but that their precious dogs now like you better than they like them.

I will try to make sense of this problem.Can the USPS trash my mail? The USPS may not throw away deliverable mail of any class. Undeliverable mail will be returned to sender if it is anything other than Standard (Bulk) mail. Undeliverable Standard mail is treated as waste.Question for you. Is your mail box the typical rural mail box? Or is it a cluster box that you use a key on? If it is a rural type box, it is owned by the residence it belongs. You are in charge of it. If it is a cluster box 99% of the time the USPS owns it. The USPS is in charge of it.I would go to the Post Office in charge of your route and explain the situation. If you have a rural box it is your job to put up another box next to the original box. The USPS is not in charge of putting up rural boxes since you own them. It may be likely there used to be a second box. Somehow it was removed and the carrier eventually wrote the second address on the one left. That wouldn’t be proper procedure, but who knows what past reason it was done. Ask which side of the mail box the USPS requires for it to be in delivery order. Put you number (not your name) on the box.There you go. Mail delivered. Just for your address.Good luck.