Times were simpler when I was a kid. We had four, maybe five – occasionally six, if WUTR from Utica was coming in – teevee channels to look at. Back then “remote control” was just another name for the youngest kid (which of course was me), and we ate good wholesome meals presented on tin foil plate type things, served in front of the television while watching Mike Douglas or Merv Griffin on plastic teevee trays that had two legs with plastic wheels on them, and which folded for easy storage (we kept ours in what would otherwise have been wasted space between the stove and the base cabinet where you stored things you never wanted to see again, along with the extra oven racks and the cutting board).

You peeled back the aluminum foil cover on your Swanson TV Dinner to reveal the delicious Salisbury Steak or Turkey or what I’ll refer to as Roast “Beef” entrees slathered in a gravy-like liquid. There was a separate section that contained meticulously whipped potatoes (sometimes if you were lucky there were steak fries instead), and another with a serving of some sort of veggies (typically an unnaturally green shade of peas, or said peas mixed with extraordinarily orange carrot cubes, and sometimes a brilliant yellow variety of corn) and a third “dessert” section that often contained what I believe was referred to as an “apple cake cobbler.” This cobbler was typically 300-500 degrees hotter than the surface of the sun, and more than capable of searing your lips together or cauterizing your tongue to the roof of your mouth.

Ah, those were the days.

Also, growing up in the ‘burbs as I did, we had a mailbox attached to the house – right there next to the front door – and the mailman (who was, indeed, a man – “Joe the Mailman,” in fact – and we had two of them. The second Joe came after the first Joe retired, but the first Joe stayed busy in retirement by writing crackpot letters to the editor, back when it took a little bit of effort to be a crackpot. I mean, you had to write something down – on paper – find an envelope, address it, put a stamp on it, and then mail it. Say what you want about crackpots in the olden days, at least they had commitment) would walk – yes, walk – house to house delivering the mail. No jeeps or little trucks back then. As I recall, Joe used to drive his own car and park it somewhere in the neighborhood and walk around with a huge leather purse, dispensing mail from one pocket while picking it up and putting it into another.

And although “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds” was never the official USPS motto, they were nevertheless words by which these dedicated civil servants lived by.

Times, of course, have changed. “Where have you gone, Joe the Mailman?” Joe got a truck and he doesn’t walk through the snow anymore. At least, not where I live. Like most of rural ‘Merica, I have a mailbox (approved by the Postmaster General) mounted on a post at the end of my driveway that apparently has an invisible (except to snowplow drivers) “hit me” sign attached to it.

My first serious run-in with the plow came, oh, I dunno, maybe four or five years ago. Now, it’s not unusual to have your once proudly erect mailbox post listing a bit during the winter. There’s a “snow wave” that gets generated by the plow that slams into the sucker and heaves it this way and that. There isn’t much you can do, other than straighten out as best you can and wait for spring.

Every once in a while, though…. Well, that wing scores a direct hit, and WHAM!

What happened in this case was the post split down the middle. About halfway down. So, as a quick fix, I went out and drove a shitload of 3″ deck screws into in an effort to make it to spring. It suffered a few more hits, took a few more screws (and I added a metal plate here and there), and by summer that poor post was in pretty tough shape. And the box was pretty beat to hell, too.

So, figuring there wasn’t much point in sending any more money than I needed to (hell, the box is a good 400 feet from my house, and I only have to look at it in passing, so who cares, right?), I got a new box, cut the post down to where it was still intact, and cut a hunk off the “For Sale” sign post they never came and got, and I spliced the two together with a conglomeration of strong-ties, joist hangers and L-Angles that I had kicking around.

Pretty? Hell, no. Two-tone (white and really, really old pressure-treated), not exactly square, but definitely functional. But I figured sooner or later the damn plow would just take it out anyway, so what the heck?

Well, a year or two of that was all my wife could stand looking at, so she declared that she wanted a new one. So, out she went with instructions to get a new, pre-made cross post type of thing. Easy enough for me to shove in the ground and mount the box to.

Instead, she comes back with one of these plastic things. If you’re not familiar, this is a plastic sleeve that fits over a post with a plastic mailbox that attaches to it. So I STILL had to get a new post, which is really the only thing I needed to replace anyway.

Oy.

Anyhow, fast forward a couple of years to this year. The box has taken a few whacks, and the sleeve part is cracked and the box part has gotten kinda wobbly. I come home one day and, hmmm, Something seems to be missing, but what is it? Oh, it’s the mailbox – which is in the ditch, along with some very soggy mail. The top part kind of snaps into the base and the plow has apparently blasted it clean off. Also, I had to scrounge around to find the doors, because they’ve been blasted off, too.

Well, I pound everything back together and hope for the best but a few weeks later we come home and the wife says “do we need to check the mail today?” And I say, “well, first we need to find the mailbox,” ‘cuz once again, it’s gone. In the snow in the ditch – sans doors.

I get it all back together, but it’s become apparent to me now that all those plastic tabs are now stretched out and deformed and this thing’s gonna have to be replaced. I just want it last until the ground thaws out so I can get a new post in there (and I begin drawing up plans in my head for a plow-roof mailbox with springs and hinges and whatnot).

So if course every day it snows, I come home hoping the mailbox is still there and things are looking good even after I got home last night. It had snowed about a foot during the day, but the mailbox is still still there, so I’m feeling pretty good. Until this morning.

We got another eight inches or so overnight, so I’m out there at 5:30 on the tractor and, sure enough, no mailbox. This time, though there’s no sign of the goddamn thing, and I’m wondering what the hell I’m gonna do when I spy a tiny bit of the house number poking up out of the snow. So I wade into the ditch – up to my waist in snow – and pull it out. The doors are gone. I guess I’ll find them sometime in April, if I’m lucky.

So I pound the damn box back on but it’s become clear to me that I’ve lost. Fuck it, snow plow – I surrender. You win.

My wife went and got us a PO Box this morning.

I never get any good mail anyway.