One of Our Mailboxes is Missing
My mailbox is gone. That is to say, the mailbox I most often used for posting is gone, removed by the US Postal Service, I’m sure.
I had a second-hand warning that this was coming. An end-of-program news report explained that the post is removing mailboxes around the country, centralizing them to cut down on operating costs and collection times. Although the actual quantity of mail is increasing, the quantity of personal letters has dropped. Both are the result of the internet: online shoppers need their purchases mailed instead of taking them home, but email is replacing the handwritten note. So the iconic blue mailbox is less needed, and becoming scarcer.
When I heard this, I knew some of our boxes would go. Although we live just three or four blocks from a post office, we had two mailboxes on the way there, not counting the three out in front of the office itself, and another two on opposite sides of the street another half block further down. That’s a lot of mailboxes for five blocks. I expected them to remove one from each side of the post office, and maybe even remove all the boxes except the ones in front of the post office itself. That would be no skin off my nose, since I walk regularly just for the exercise, though of course my favorite is the box that is easiest for me to reach, and which incidentally sees the most pedestrian traffic.
What they did in fact do was remove my favorite box, and leave all the others in place. Including the two on opposite sides of the street half a block from the post office itself. Isn’t that always the way?