I thought I would talk about something a little strange today. As I have been out driving around lately I have noticed mailboxes. Most all of my life I have lived in places where the conventional way to receive your mail was via a mailbox either posted on the outside of your house next to the door or at the end of your driveway on a post or pole. Over the years we have occassionally lived in an apartment for short periods of time and our mail came to a mail kiosk centrally located somewhere within the complex. I never really gave it much thought. I remember when we moved to Pennsylvania it seemed everyone in our neighborhood had a similar mailbox. It wasn't mandatory but I guess people just liked the look and since it was a newly developed neighborhood and you had to provide your own mailbox people naturally wanted what their neighbor had. When we moved to Atlanta I spent a couple of weeks going out daily with our realtor to find that perfect house. In all the neighborhoods there that I saw the mailbox was provided by the builder of the neighborhood and they had to be matching. When we bought our house there everyone in our neighborhood had an identical box at the end of their drive way. It was only when we moved to Texas that I discovered my favorite type of mailbox. Again I spent a couple of weeks with a realtor trying to find a house and every single neighborhood we went to was the same when it came to mailboxes.... the traditional box was not seen and in its place was mailbox kiosks. In the neighborhood where our house was located there were just under one thousand homes. The mailbox kiosks were located all throughout the neighborhood, usually one or two on each street depending upon how long the street was. It was an easy walk to the kiosk where your box was located. In this day when identity theft is so prevailent it seems this type of mailbox is the best and safest. Each person has their own key and is assigned a box when they purchase their home. The box we had was large and could hold a lot of mail so anytime we were away for a week or two we didn't have to have the post office hold our mail as there was plenty of room in the box. Each box was like a long, deep drawer. When a package was delivered it was placed in one of the larger boxes along the bottom of the kiosk and the key to that box was placed in your box. When you inserted the key into the large package box it would lock in place and you could not remove it, only the mail carrier could do that. Safety! And speaking of the mail carrier... what an easy job! No more walking from house to house or driving all over, you simply drove to the kiosks on your route, parked, distributed the mail in all the boxes there then on to the next kiosk. The entire time we lived in Austin I don't recall ever seeing a neighborhood that didn't have this type of mailbox. I never saw one mailbox on a post at the end of a driveway. Since leaving Texas I have not seen any other neighborhoods with mailbox kiosks. They may exist here but for the most part all I see are mailboxes at the end of driveways. Lately I have been noticing really awful looking mailboxes. Oftentimes it is a whole slew of them all lined up together and they are bent, half knocked over, rusted, doors falling off, etc... Since we are full time RVers we use a mail forwarding service for our mail delivery. It is located in Texas, the state of our residency, and is forwarded once a week to us at a post office in South Carolina or wherever we happen to be at the time. So who knew one could write some much about something as mundane as a mailbox? HA HA HA.... leave it to me! Below are a few photos I found online of the type of mailbox kiosks I am talking about just to give you an idea.
The one we had in Austin was exactly like the bottom photo here. There is a slot for outgoing mail too. Personally I think all mailboxes should be of this type. They can be made to look pretty by building around them and incorporating the features of the neighborhood.
