A Maine Mailbox

 

It's just a standard issue mailbox. 

Cost: $24.99 at Home Depot.

Its current resting place is on the front stoop of our lovely townhouse in Stockton Springs, Maine. 

At this point the insightful reader is no doubt wondering how any mail will make its way into the mailbox given its current location.

It won't. The USPS has some pretty specific restrictions regarding the placement of mailboxes. Poles are good. Posts are fine. Platforms will do nicely.

Stoops, not so much.

The mailbox represents just the latest engineering/mechanical challenge facing your lame blogger. I have tackled these kinds of challenges before. There are numerous epic fails and very few successes in my sad resume.

The reason the mailbox is resting on our stoop is because the platform upon which it is meant to be attached is a sumbitch. 

Out at the end of our access road sits a mailbox platform that was built to accommodate the 16 mailboxes for the 16 townhouses that make up our community called South Cape Shores. Fifteen mailboxes in not quite numerical order, all firmly affixed to the strong platform, sit proudly facing Cape Jellison Road. 

Any mailman happening by would say, "Gee, these folks are very cooperative. They are exactly the kind of folks for whom I'd like to deliver mail. Heck, here's an Ace Hardware flyer for all of you. I've got plenty more where that came from. Have a nice day." 

So the task that lay before me was quite simple: Find a way to attach our mailbox to the same mailbox platform upon which all our neighbors' mailboxes are attached. Now, I'm no carpenter but even I know that to attach one thing to another thing one needs something that holds. A nail. A screw. As much as I dreaded the techniques required to nail or screw one thing to another, the only viable alternative would have been for me to stand out there on Cape Jellison Road and HOLD the mailbox whenever the mailman happened by. The unpredictable weather in this part of the mid-coast as well as the unreliable mail delivery schedule quickly negated that option.

Nan, a woman who is not the least bit intimidated by power tools, took matters into her own capable, manicured hands. She examined the mailbox pictured above like a trained radiologist looking at a CT scan, and determined quickly that a Ryobi power drill and several pointy screw thingies would be just the ticket to get the job done.

A quick (40-minute) trip to Bangor and we were the proud owners of this little number. I don't know what all those other bits do, but the drill thingie goes round and round. This mailbox would soon be affixed, attached, and ready for business.

As you can see, there was just enough room on the platform for our sweet #15.

All we had to do was take a pointy, longish screw and drill it through one of the holes in the bottom of the mailbox into the wooden platform.

Child's play!

An observant reader will now be thinking back to the picture of a damn mailbox on a damn stoop that opened this entry and be thinking, "Something went awry."

What went awry was the idea of screwing a pointy screw into wood that is the approximate strength of hardened steel. The Ryobi, as cute as can be in its lime green outfit, was no match the the wooden platform. There were other problems involving angles and yelling but you get the picture. 

We headed back down the access road, drill and mailbox in hand, defeated for now but resolved to find a solution, and soon. We were missing out on a lot of flyers.

One possible solution to this thorny problem was our own sweet Buddy. Maybe we could train him to carry a cute basket in his incredibly sharp teeth and wait by the other mailboxes until the kindly, but probably frightened, mailman came by and dropped our mail into his basket whereupon Buddy would gaily and proudly trot back to our townhouse, tail wagging, having earned his favorite treat. A Miniature Schnauzer Express.

Good plan.

When we broached this plan to The Budster, this is what we got:

Not interested. Happily unemployed and prefer to remain so, thank you anyway.

Well, we will solve our mailbox problem, you can take that to the bank dear reader. There is more than one way to skin a Maine coon cat, a saying that is music to Buddy's ears.

Ain't life grand.

EDITOR'S ADDENDUM: At 7:08 a.m. on June 2, 2023, under clear skies with moderate temperatures, having watched numerous YouTube videos and with the good advice and counsel of dear friends, Nan Hicks, aka TLOTH, aka Ryobi Rosie, screwed the hell out of the #15 mailbox. It sits comfortably yet firmly atop the platform designed for the purpose. May it last longer than Your Lame Blogger.