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Some newcomers may find the mail distribution in town confusing. It’s common here to see clusters of little square boxes near the entrance of friendly neighborhoods. Mine is like that.
The mailboxes stand at the only intersection in my neighborhood like a rag-tag team of rough and readies. Some of the boxes are pretty and well-tended, while others are covered in mud and stick out in the crowd like a drunk person pretending to be sober.
The boxes are much like the houses found here. Unlike city subdivisions, country houses refuse to line up equidistantly from each other. Nor do they conform to complimenting floor plans or even rigid garden restrictions.
One of my neighbors, for example, has a life-size wooden cutout of a ghost. She painted it black, with white circles for eyes, and placed in such a way that it peers out from the woods near her driveway. It startles me every single time I pass it; even when I remind myself it’s coming.
The mailboxes show the same sort of contempt for uniformity or expression
for whimsy pending perspective. Several neighbors, not wanting to bother
with the post office-issued metal boxes, dug post holes to place their own independent boxes – but the post diggers varied in skill, causing many of the boxes to lean toward each other for support.
Even the tidy metal boxes from the post office expose fierce independence from one another. Several people wrote their name or address on the front using a Sharpie. It’s unclear why they did
this, as the postal workers
access the boxes from the back and each box has its own assigned number on the front, so the information doesn’t seem to assist anyone.
Others stuck on decorative stickers that weather and time eroded down to a gummy rectangle of glue. Some people don’t even bother to close their boxes after retrieving their mail, leaving the door swinging open, panting like a dog on a hot day.
I can’t speak to other neighborhoods, but our carrier, Evangelina, is a star. She lives by the U.S. Postal Service’s motto: “Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night will stay these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”
Can you imagine finding a partner with that kind of tenacious devotion? Evangelina offers a bonus service not included in her creed; she’s friendly.
“Oh, Abigail,” she says if our post box times overlap. “I haven’t seen you in a while. Has your sister been to visit?”
I’m always stymied at these encounters. I mean, I enjoy speaking with her, she’s a quick wit and – not that it matters – but a pleasure to look at as well. Yet, she knows more about me than I know about her.
She knows when I received a “return notification required” envelope, meaning I missed a deadline on a bill. She knows my pen pals by name and could recognize my handwriting if pressed. Evangelina is privy to who carries my car insurance to how often I order from Amazon.
Gulp. She knows intimate details, or at least could make reasonable assumptions about my life and living habits. I know only one thing about her – she’s a friendly mail carrier. So the relationship feels lopsided.
My girlfriend who lives a couple of neighborhoods away isn’t as lucky with her carriers. Like my neighborhood, she and her neighbors line up their boxes at the bottom of the street. This is according to her, but I’ve seen it happen: if she has a package too large for the box, her female carrier will drive it up and even initiate a conversation with her.
“None of the male drivers will bring me my packages,” she told me one day while we sat on her high deck overlooking the forest. “They just leave me a slip and make me drive out the post office to pick it up.”
I know an anecdote doesn’t equate to statistical relevance. However, in two anecdotes concerning mail carriers in Murphy, the females are awesome.
Occasionally, I’ll run into one my neighbors at the boxes. Once upon a time, somebody even dug a little patch of earth and planted flowers there.
We’ll make small talk about how hot it is or complain about the road construction type of thing. Everybody plays nice at our version of the savannah watering hole.
I like to guess which box the person will open based on their appearance. I thought a certain gruff-looking man whose car boasted a bumper sticker of a dog would go for the box with the dog bone on it. But he surprised me, opening the one with a butterfly.
That’s just the thing about people. We all show up like a rag-tag team of rough and readies, but inside our private places we are rarely what others might expect.
I’m proud to live in a neighborhood of rebels who follow the rules, according to their own sensibilities. And if one of us lacks something – say, the skill to dig a post hole – well, everybody seems to share a shovel, or shoulder, to lean on.
Abigail Hickman is a staff correspondent for the Cherokee Scout. Email her at abigailhickman44@gmail.com.