Mailbox Party

Among the junk mail in my mailbox came an official notice -- a multiple-choice form with a couple of boxes checked.

My mailbox, which has withstood 90 miles-an-hour winds, blizzards that blind and countless gravel sprays from passing trucks for at least the past 25 years, is too short.

The notice said I need to raise my mailbox by 13 to 17 inches.

If I don’t raise it by September 30, my mail delivery will be suspended.

Clearly, this issue is most urgent and important.

My mailbox is 27 inches from the ground.

The mail delivery person drives a low-to-the-ground, fuel-efficient car because she has one of the longest routes in the nation.

I doubt she will ever purchase a tall truck for her delivery route.

This urgent and important matter makes no common sense.

This type of task drives me crazy.

It doesn’t make anyone’s life easier.

It wastes time.

Who decided this mailbox must be changed right this minute, after more than two decades of stability?

I took a deep breath and considered my options for compliance or non-compliance.

I could let the postal service suspend my delivery service.

It’s mostly junk mail, anyway and I could pick up my mail whenever I go to town.

Important mail is rarely urgent.

I could even rent a P.O. box -- except then I would have to change my address for everyone who sends mail.

Actually, that wouldn’t be a bad strategy, especially during campaign season.

Instead of hanging my mailbox on a taller post, I could lower the ground level around it.

But that might compromise the integrity of the current post and the mailbox would tip over in the wind.

I decided to remove the mailbox and re-attach it to a taller post.

As I unbolted it and drilled holes in the new post, I blamed this entire project on politics.

Politics are always behind silly directives.

This notice must have come now because of an epiphany from one politician or another.

Both parties lack common sense so it could have come from either one.

As I tinkered, I decided we all need a third political choice.

Our extensive platform for this new party will be based solely on common sense.

We can call it the Mailbox Party.

As soon as the wind died down, I set the new post.

Still fuming and mentally writing rules for the Mailbox Party platform, I needed to do something useful, so I set a new post for my hitchrail.

This summer, a horse had jerked back and illuminated the weakness of a rotten old post, scattering a large swath of splinters and wood chips around the hitchrail.

Since then, whenever I saddled horses, they were tied farther away to a sturdy shoeing stock.

A repaired hitchrail would make sense and make life easier.

The hitchrail repair project was the antithesis of the mailbox raising project.

As I packed dirt around the new hitchrail post, my proposed platform for the Mailbox Party relaxed, along with my blood pressure.

Common sense materialized out of the dust.

I admitted that a higher mailbox might make life easier for the delivery driver.

Maybe it wasn’t the request to raise the mailbox that bothered me, but the delivery method.

An impersonal, ambiguous form and an urgent, arbitrary deadline directed me.

I don’t like people to tell me what to do.

This might be a character flaw.

Still, the irony of the normally bland post office delivering an obnoxious message that caused ire was not lost on me.

I saddled my horse at my new, common sense hitchrail.

My personal rebellion didn’t result in a third political party that might change history, but it still felt good.