Fixing The Mailbox...

 Yeah, again.

When we moved into this current location  little over 5 years ago, our mailbox shared a post with the neighbor.  Who did car repair from his garage.  Which is, per our local zoning laws, illegal.  Mind you, you can certainly do your own car repairs, but running a business like that, it's illegal.  

I do not know the full history of it, but I can make a few guesses.  I should start with the history of the suburb I currently live in, not that I know it all that well, but it seems that the suburb I live in was once the possible target of annexation by a larger suburb across the river.  And because the local residents did not want that, they formed this new city.  And then the nannies got their fingers into it.  

In my suburb, there are rules against things like back yard clotheslines.  That's right, rules against energy-saving methods to dry your clothes, because, I guess, some one found the sight of other people airing out their wardrobe was ... offensive.  It doesn't end there.  You're not permitted to plant certain types of trees - such as those that might ... drop something.  So Oaks (which drop acorns), Maples (which drop seeds), Pines (which can drop cones), cottonwoods (which can explode with fur) are all prohibited - along with others.  Why?  Well, because they might leave what someone considers "a mess".  Mind you, a fair number of these alleged adults who raised kids did the same damned thing, by dropping their children and doing very little to properly raise or teach them.

So yeah, it's a bit of a weird world.  But it's mine.  

And so, the other day, when I was down here pounding the keyboard, ruminating about the possibility of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, an unintelligent life form who may have been in control of a vehicle, and might have been driving, struck and leveled my mailbox.  The one I built at my own expense because the former neighbor would park cars they were working on in front of the mailbox.  Or they would otherwise block it so we were not receiving our mail.  During a week, where we might expect mail delivery six times, we might get mail delivered once or twice.  

After repeated complaints to our then-management company, who did nothing, the police arrived next door.  No one in my household had anything to do with it, and the management company who owned this location at the time accused us of calling the police.  It turned out a complaint had been filed by one of the people who had paid this fellow to do some repairs and hadn't been happy with them.  So that got sorted, which was good, because using bondo and other automotive chemicals in a residential location can be extremely irritating due to the overwhelming odors.  And my wife is sensitive to things like that, which can cause her migraines.  

So to resolve the issue with the mailboxes, I proposed and built what I consider a very nice-looking mailbox.  Mind you, this is the second mailbox post I did from scratch.  The first, back in my house, was a beast.  It was reminiscent of my father's mailbox post that he built for our first home.  This thing was so solid I often climbed up and sat on it. 

Before you say "ouch" take a step back.  Think of a giant + sign.  That's right.  A tall post was embedded into the ground, and a crossbeam ran from the edge of the road back towards the house.  And it was braced by diagonal braces under the back-side portion away from the road to permit ground clearance.  Dad's was made with 4x4 posts, measuring 3 1/2" square.  He used half-lap joinery, which is where you cut away half of the thickness of each piece, and then attach them together.  And the two pieces are then joined looking like they grew that way.

I wasn't fortunate enough to have the tools to pull off what my father did, so when I had to build a mailbox post which had repeatedly been knocked down, I, as I do, upgraded.  I started with his "plus symbol" design, and upgraded.  The central post of my mailbox post was a 2x4, which was the meat of a 2x6 sandwich.  These were cut in such a way that the two vertical 2x6s were whole wood.  The central 2x4 was cut in half to permit a horizontal 2x4 to extend as one piece from the front to the back of the plus, and it was paired again with 2x6s, which were cut to fit around the vertical 2x6s.  There were additional braces running at 45 degrees under the mailbox extension, and in the back, the upper portion was also braced.  

This thing was so strong that when the neighbor returned from his weekend boating and ... I am guessing slightly tipsy, banged up against the mailbox, the mailbox wiggled a bit - then he came to me about the dent in his car.  I pointed out that, when one's vehicle comes in contact with a non-mobile feature of the landscape, there's usually additional investigation which would establish whether or not the driver was in full and proper control of the vehicle.  That is, was the driver sober.  So he dropped it.  

The new mailbox was a little bit of an homage, and a slightly reduced version of the Plus.  This one included one vertical 4x4 post, and a treated 2x4 and two cedar boards.  I cut the 2x4 into two pieces, and then cut the two cedar boards short, and those were bolted, with 3/8" lag screws, to the 4x4 post.  The 2x4 was screwed, flat, in between the two portions of the cedar boards, to form an "unbraced plus".  It's worked fine, since.

Or did, until Thursday, when some jerk drove up into my yard to hit it.  At least, that's what the marks on the curb seemed to indicate.  I cannot imagine my mailbox jumping out of the concrete ball it was built in and running into the street - on one leg.  But it was snapped off.  The street side was broken off about 8" above the ground, where the "spike" portion of the remaining in-ground wood extended 21" tall.  This matched the broken portion of the post, which was left in my yard, along with the broken solar light I'd installed on top because I liked it, and the flowerpot which we installed this year with a nice flowering plant.  

And because I did not want to pull and reinstall an extremely expensive 4x4 post, I decided instead to build a "splint".  Lumber prices are all over the place right now, but they seem to be dropping off.  I did notice, when I was at the local big-box home improvement store, that plywood was starting to come down in price.  About a month ago I was looking at $99.99 for a 4x8 foot sheet of 3/4" plywood.  That has dropped all the way down to $72.99 as of Father's Day.  

But strangely enough, their finished-lumber section, which this outfit buys as shrink-wrapped, labeled boards for the higher-end woods like poplar, aspen, maple, and oak, has not seen any change in those lumber costs.  So rather than spend $59.99 for a new 8 foot 4x4 post, I went with about $35 for two six foot long by 5 1/2" wide and 3/4" thick oak boards.  And for reinforcement - or to add insult to injury, I suppose - I also picked up 4 1" Angle irons - steel bars that look like an L if you look down their length.  These were 1" wide on the longest side, but only 7/8" wide on the inside of the L.  

And since my post in the ground was 3 1/2" by 3 1/2", I built a box that was made out of four pieces 32" long of the 3/4" oak that were cut down to 4 1/2" wide.  Rather than worry about getting the front and back pieces and side pieces correct, I figured I needed a box that allowed a tight fit around the 3 1/2" post, plus two layers of 1/8" thick steel on each corner.  That meant that the inside of the box needed to be 3 3/4" square.  Each side of the box would overlap one edge, so each outer side of the box would be 4 1/2" plus 3/4" wide - or 5 1/4" wide.  

So once the box was assembled and slipped over the remaining post, I then put the angle irons around the corners - and hammered them into the ground so they aren't exposed above ground. I am certain that they will, eventually, rust away.  But there was literally nothing I could do to them that would remain on them after being tightly rammed into the ground, because any coats of paint would have scraped off.  So they're bare metal.

And the box fit tightly around the post, which is also glued - I used about 3/4" of a small bottle of wood glue to get the post somewhat repaired.  I do not plan on removing the "splint".

And because I'm a Boy Scout at heart, I also planned out what I'll do the next time the pole comes down.  And that one is going to be completely different.  In order to save expense, it will be built out of PVC pipe, which will be buried partially in the ground.  And, as you have probably guessed, it will be surrounding a 2" galvanized steel pipe and rebar, all buried in cement inside the PVC pipe.  In order to insure the thing is as solid as possible, I will put two of these PVC posts into the ground, one behind the other, and another piece of PVC (hiding more steel) will be attached across the top and extending out to the street, where the mailboxes will be.

Because if this happens again, I am certainly going to want to make sure that the idiot who snaps off my mailbox suffers.  The police officer I spoke with was concerned that the driver did not bother to stop or say anything, and drove that poorly, and I live right across the street from a school, and the kids are now out on summer vacation.

So here's hoping if it happens again, at the very least, the tow-truck driver will let me know after they get the car hooked up.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not looking to deliberately cause injuries to people - I am, however, looking to protect that which I have, and to insure that the next time some idiot whips around a corner and runs into a mailbox, they don't go away laughing.  

And for the record, yes, I do have an alternate plan.  When I lived with my parents in the house along the river, we kept the original mailbox post.  That "post" was a pipe, which my father said was NOT steel but some other type of metal pipe.  When the pipe was taken to a local shop to have a bracket welded on it, the welder said that the entire shop "lit up like the sun" when he turned the torch on it.  My father said something like "Manganese, maybe" but I am not familiar enough with the various metals which are used in making pipes to speak authoritatively there.  I can tell you, however, that our mailbox was mounted to this post, and the post had been sunk into a three foot hole that had been filled with concrete around the pole. 

The pole, however, was not fixed in the concrete.  It extended through it, deep into the ground.  I had been told it was maybe twenty feet long, and the portion above the ground was perhaps five feet tall (it was mounted off the road, deeper in the ditch), and about six feet long.  The bend in the pipe was fairly gentle.  But what it did permit was when the county snowplow came through, often late in the evening, the mailbox might get hit a solid whack as the plow went by at 15-30 mph.  

When it was hit, the pole would swing in the concrete fitting and spin out of the way of the plow.  Dad had someone build a gadget which attached to the threaded end of the post, and was otherwise a sort of a U.  It was a little wider than our large, country-style mailbox which was about 15" wide by a good two feet deep and at least eighteen inches tall.  The U protected the corners of the mailbox from what was, I suppose, the inevitable result of younger men who had baseball bats, cars, and very little in the way of scruples or respect for others, because often there would be people filing reports that their mailboxes had been vandalized.

The good news is that these idiots were unaware that messing around with mailboxes was a federal crime, which carries much harsher penalties.  But my Dad, rather than choosing to have to replace his mailbox regularly, protected it.  The U brace protected the metal (possibly aluminum) mailbox corners so when a plow - or baseball bat - struck it, the box remained square.  And the bat - or the plow - certainly knew it had struck something solid.  

So should I ever come into a boatload of money and buy land in the country to build a home, yes, I will be looking for some steel pipe - or similar - to mount a mailbox that can spin if struck.  I plan to actually sink the pole into the ground at an angle, and using fittings and etc, the portion the mailbox will be mounted on will be parallel to the ground.  The pole going into the ground will likely be at a 30-45 degree angle, with the upper portion closer to the road.  That way, if the mailbox is hit, it will swing out of the way and up vertically, which will allow gravity to also pull it back down to the proper position.