Mailboxes

Next time you take a drive in the country, I hope you notice the wide range of mailboxes folks have put up to accept the stuff the US Postal Service gets paid to deliver on a nearly daily basis. I've seen some very creative mailbox supports with tractor and barn mailboxes as well as hand pump and cream separator posts. Some folks have built nice masonry surrounds with flowers, and some are little more than the familiar box on a post design. Since we moved here a little over a year ago, neither rain, nor sleet, nor dark of night has kept our US Mail carriers from making their appointed rounds, and sometimes I wonder how they do it.

From what I can tell, the mail carriers use ESP around here. You know that Extra Sensory Perception thing when somebody just "knows". I've had occasion lately to notice that the majority of rural mailboxes don't have an address on them, and almost as often is no name either. The mail carriers that get the mail to the right place that don't have any id on their mailbox must have plenty of ESP.

It got me wondering how emergency response workers and delivery drivers would find some of these places. There are plenty of county roads out there that are not marked so you just have to know where you are. Delivery drivers from UPS and FedEx must really wonder if they are at the right place now and then. Maybe not everybody looking for these places knows these folks, and if there is nothing to identify their place as the address they are searching for, seems like it could be a problem once in a while.

From my perspective, it would make sense for everybody to put their address on their rural mailbox. It would help a lost person such as myself stay found, and maybe help somebody important like emergency responders find their target faster.