KAREN WIGHT -- No Place Like Home

We live on a very eclectic street. The houses run the gamut of size and

style.

There are modern, New England, California ranch, French, big, small and

everything in between. We moved into our house 11 years ago and our

mailbox was located in the front corner of our yard, just like many

others on our street.

Quite frankly, the location didn’t strike me as important at all. Some

people have mailboxes in the corner of their lots. These lone rangers

dutifully guard the property line. Other mailboxes are adjacent to the

neighbors’ yard, giving the owners some Gladys Kravitz-like

opportunities.

Some neighbors have mail slots in their garage doors. A few have

monuments of one sort or another that house their mailboxes in random

locations along the sidewalk. In other words, the mailboxes are as

eclectic as the houses to which they are attached (or unattached, as the

case may be).

As most things go in my house, it was only a matter of time until I

reached the mailbox as a remodeling opportunity. I realized that I could

have a closer encounter of the mailbox kind if I moved my post to the end

of the path that leads from my front door to the street. Made sense. I

could incorporate it into a planter, landscape the heck out of it, drive

my husband crazy along the way -- yep, it had all the desired

qualifications of a project I could take on.

So, one day, with a baby in my arms (this was my insurance that I would

not have to help dig a posthole or mix cement) I started pointing and

waving. My good-natured husband moved the mailbox from its lone ranger

status in the corner of the yard to its new home in a planter at the end

of our walkway. I followed his efforts by planting an impressive variety

of shrubs and flowers and -- voila! -- the project was complete.

I can’t remember how many days it took for me to realize that my new and

improved mailbox was not being fed by the mailman. How many government

holidays could we have in a row? Maybe it was the sleep deprivation

torture that my newborn was inflicting upon me. Maybe I was just wildly

unpopular, even to the bulk-raters.

Could it be that the mailman missed my new work of art? He would have had

to walk right by it on the way to the next mailbox. It took a few days,

lying in wait, to catch Mickey the Mailman. Finally, I was successful.

How could he possibly justify withholding my coveted catalogs?

Mickey told me that I would not receive any mail in the new location

until I filed a change permit with the post office. At first, I thought

he was kidding. Stopping in the middle of my lot instead of stopping at

the corner post didn’t seem like an inconvenience at all. The old mailbox

had not been next to the neighbors’, there was no two-for-one effort

being lost.

I argued that for some destinations, he walked up to the garage door to

put the mail in the slot. He was certainly losing more precious time

strolling to garage doors than by delivering my mail to a mailbox on the

sidewalk. No ma’am. No permit, no mail.

So off I went to the post office to file my permit, and a few more days

without mail just to seal my punishment. Mickey gave me the nod and also

my mail, finally. As I drive by the many “special” mailboxes that seem to

adorn my carpool circuit, I wonder if they went through the same thing I

did.

Is that barrel a regulation size? Is that killer whale in the right

place? Do the propellers on that biplane meet codes? Or do their owners

believe in creative expression at any cost, individualism over Big

Brother, and the freedom to flaunt their spirited manifestations of

originality and invention?

Maybe their mailmen just smile.

* KAREN WIGHT is a Newport Beach resident. Her column runs Saturdays.