The mailbox

When I was a little girl growing up in Duluth, a hale, hearty man used to walk past our house nearly every day. I can see him in my mind's eye, in a picture that may or may not be accurate--white-haired but youthful, in khaki trousers, walking briskly. He lived over by 21st Avenue East, and he walked every day to 24th Avenue, to mail a letter.

Even then I knew that the letter was only an excuse for a stroll. When you're a serious grownup, you have to have a destination, and his was the squat little blue mailbox on the corner of 24th and Fourth. It must have been a pleasant walk, winter and summer, along the leafy street, past the big brick church, and home again.

The mailbox was just one of the many things that made our neighborhood a neighborhood. The church, of course, was another. The bus stop was another. And the sidewalks themselves, busy with children on tricycles and women walking dogs (a woman walked her boxer past our house every day; Guv always warned us to stay away from dogs, but I used to fly down the lawn to pet him) and flirting teenagers and, well, people walking to the mailbox.

When we bought our house in St. Paul, it had the same feel. A leafy street, a church nearby, a park, a bus stop, and, on our corner, a mailbox.

I like mailboxes. I like their purpose, I like their cheerful and friendly appearance--the red cylinders of England, the green tubes of Ireland, the red boxes of Canada, and the squat dark-blue corner boxes here in the U.S., all ready and willing to accept your letters.

Whenever I see one, I sort of wish I had something to mail--and sometimes I do.

Like the hale white-haired man in my memory, I have walked to our corner mailbox many times, to drop off the Netflix return, or to mail a bill or a letter. It's a satisfying feeling to open the wide mouth, drop something in, close the door, listen, and then open the door (as our mother always cautioned) to make sure the letter dropped.

Last weekend, on a very cold afternoon, I walked to the corner with a bill and a Netflix movie. The corner looked unfamiliarly light and airy, and it took a few stunned seconds for me to realize that the mailbox was gone. All that was left was the flat concrete platform on which it had stood.

I had read that the Postal Service was planning cutbacks; they're talking now of delivering mail only five days a week, instead of six, and the price of stamps is going up again in May. But nobody said anything about taking away corner mailboxes, and seeing that blank space, that empty platform, was oddly devastating. I was more upset about that loss than other, similar losses, perhaps because there had been no warning. I felt bereft.

You know me. You know that I am not a Luddite, not a sentimentalist, not someone who thinks the best time ever was the 1950s and if only we could all go back to those big chunky cars and smiling aproned housewives all would be well. (Though those cars are kind of cool.)

But I'm also not entirely comfortable living in a society where our number one premium is on efficiency.  Self-serve gas stations, ATM machines instead of bank tellers, self-check-out lines at Cub and Byerlys... yes, they're faster, and I guess in some way they're cheaper, but I can't say that they're as interesting or as fun as chatting with another human being.

And now mailboxes! Yes, I can drive to the post office, or bring my mail to work and drop it in the box in the mailroom. But isn't it better to carry my letter down the street, nodding at my neighbors, listening to the birds or the snowblowers or the Harleys or whatever the sounds of the day might be, open the wide mouth of the mailbox, drop in my letter, and listen to it fall?