I seem to have a thing when it comes to the mail. Not the letters or packages that are delivered, but mailboxes and mail trucks. It is a standing joke with me ever since I had a few incidences with both. Yesterday I added to the stories.
I took the dog out for some fresh air and saw that my neighbor's garbage can was in the street rolling on its side. My neighbor, who I've only met a couple of times, is 97 years old. He is very stooped over and walks with a shuffle and getting that garbage can was not going to happen until his son visited. So Elliot and I walked down, picked up the can, and walked up his driveway to leave it by his garage. Elliot was quite excited to be exploring a new driveway and yard and so he went out on his tether and began sniffing. I slowly started back down the driveway, imagining the little man peering at me through his front window.
Across the street from his house, is my neighbor two doors down from me. She died three years ago and her house has been sitting there empty while her kids decided what to do with it. Since then I have picked up flyers, newspapers, trash, and anything else that might have been left in her yard and on her door. If I didn't get to it, one of the other neighbors did. Recently the house was sold to a corporation, and when I discovered that said corporation had sent in a lawn guy to strip her wonderful fruit trees before the fruit had ripen (she had the best grapefruit ever and I enjoyed it for months), I stopped cleaning up the yard. The next door neighbor took over my job and mentioned one time to me that he did this.
As I came down the driveway and looked across the street, I noticed our weekly neighborhood newspaper in her yard near the street. I thought back to the conversation regarding this things, realized that her next door neighbor was away for the holidays, and because it was the holidays I decided to pick up the newspaper. I pulled Elliot across the street and gathered up the paper wrapped in its colorful, blue plastic. But then my brain processed a few other weird thoughts (according to my daughter when I relayed this story to her), and the bottom line of that processing was that I put the newspaper into her mailbox and shut the lid.
Elliot, meanwhile, was up in her driveway now sniffing. I followed him up the drive and stood while he wandered around. I wondered if her dog's scent was still there after three years and if Elliot even remembered the dog. I always think of this when I'm in her yard and sometimes I apologize to her for not taking the dog like she asked us to. She always said she would come back to haunt the house for fun so I talk to her a lot. After awhile I got bored and made Elliot come back down the driveway. As I passed by her mailbox, the lid popped open and the blue plastic covered newspaper could clearly be seen. I causally used my left hand to flip it closed. It popped open again. So I moved the dog leash from one hand to the other, and using my right hand now, I slammed the lid gently so that it would latch.
And the entire mailbox, pole included, fell over backwards into the yard.
I stood for just a few moments in shock, imagining the neighbor next door looking out her window, imagining the neighbor whose trashcan I had picked up looking out his window. I stood and wondered briefly if I was in an episode of Candid Camera. Then I went over and picked up the mailbox and its attachments. The pole was completely rusted and the bottom had at one time broken off from its counterpart that had been once cemented into the ground. I vaguely remembered that when my neighbor had still been alive another neighbor had run over her and my next door neighbor's mailboxes. He had replaced them and I remembered something else happening to her mailbox again not soon after that. Apparently she had solved the problem by driving a metal stake into the ground and zip tying the mailbox pole to the stake in the ground. There was one zip tie holding the box to the pole and the tie had just worn out from sun exposure and popped into two when I closed the lid.
I was relieved that fixing the problem was going to be easy. I managed to prop the mailbox up against the stake and Elliot and I went home to get a couple of zip ties. I then returned to the yard, still figuring people peering out the window at me, and repaired the mailbox better then it was before. And then Elliot and I took the stupid, blue, plastic newspaper, tossed it into our trashcan, and hid inside the house.
I didn't think much more about it until later that day while on a phone call with my friend. She was talking about how it was the season to be nice and do nice deeds, and I told her about picking up my neighbor's trashcan. That, of course, led to the mailbox and she and I couldn't stop laughing as I told the story. Cara and her issues with postal items.
But now I'm wondering if the ghost of my neighbor was telling me to take that newspaper home to throw it away, which I should have done in the first place. But then I knew my neighbor better then that. She would have said, "Throw the damn thing in the yard for all I care. It isn't our house anymore, and I don't care anymore, I'm dead. And you should have kicked the mailbox up into the yard too." But then another part of me thought maybe she was bored and messing with me, knowing I would think the next door neighbor was peering out of her window watching me. So either way I repaired the damage I had done, possibly made my dead neighbor's day, and showed my peering neighbors that I am certainly a good neighbor to have.
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