We can only have so much Americana
Published by on January 3rd, 2008 7 Comments »
We can have their donuts, their missiles, and their fast-food fed wobble-bottoms, but we will never have their mailboxes.
The most disappointing aspect of this slice of Americana which will always be out of our reach in the UK, is the imagination – if not necessarily the required creative and practical skills to do a decent job – with which some of them have applied to their mailboxes. First you need a demonstration of what I mean, right here. It’s a shame because the classic British eccentricity might be able to generate a greater level of weirdness to which even the wackiest American can’t rise – OK, well, maybe just an altogether different kind of weirdness.
The reason we cannot have these glorious projections of self expression, is down to a couple of factors:
1. We just don’t have the space
Mailboxes need room to breath, space in which to sit there in their eternally expectant state waiting for the day’s mail to arrive. There’s something magical about their sentry-like stations at the front of the house. You know, I think I would end up talking to mine, offering a thank you for work well done, or wishing it a good day in passing.
2. They just would not survive more than ten minutes
It is difficult enough in the UK to plant a tree in a public space and have it survive beyond the sapling stage. Anything sticking out of the ground is a magnet for the passing vandal. Now I am sure the American mailboxes suffer a little from the drive-by baseball bat, and I guarantee some have the odd bullet hole in them. Take your typical road in the UK, if fitted with residential mailboxes, and they will be repositioned overnight to a new location disturbingly resembling your car windscreen. They little beggars cannot leave real estate signs in an upright position, so mailboxes, with the clear understanding of the additional level of inconvenience meddling would create, don’t stand a chance.
One perfect fit, however, would be with the postmen. For the most part the last thing your average postman wants is to actually walk up to your front door and mash your fragile, unfoldable mail through your letterbox – I’m sure they see it as fitting retribution for making them walk so far.
If you are in the UK, would you have one of these mailboxes out the front of your hose?
7 Responses to “We can only have so much Americana”
Class!
How do you stop people stealing your mail?
I have always thought it funny that Americans should have so much trust in their community that they can put up a mailbox. Some of them so beautiful. And on the other hand they have so little trust they have an organisation like the TSA believe that every bottle of shampoo contains a core component of DIY C4.
I guess I am looking for the enterprising US company to produce a 911 mailbox complete with Anthrax detection and Aircraft avoidance technology, TSA approved!
@Emma, this heresa Smith & Wesson, still mah mail and I’ll blow your head clean off!
I couldn’t have an external mailbox, but what I could really do with is a bigger hole in the Front door to allow those oversize parcels in, without having to go to the sorting office with my passport every time. Oh, and an automated signature machine which could sign for recorded delivery parcels when I’m not in. Maybe a remote workstation, with a webcam and a robotic arm which I controlled from work, could do the job. Too complicated in practice though. I’ll stick with things as they are.
Methinks the post office should start using twitter to contact peeps when they try and deliver something and said peep is not in rather than buggering off after 3 seconds or trying to ram a motherboard through a 10-inch slot.
I’m with Startled Bunny and Dave G- we definitely need a bigger mail slot in the door. Ours isn’t even “standard” size, meaning that envelopes up to A5 size won’t fit through without a certain level of persistence. I really hate getting crumpled magazines too. * sigh *
Though deliveries are attempted swiftly, at least we can holler from the balcony if we need to catch the postman before he speeds away. I am not above looking like an excited ape up there if it means the Amazon package gets into my greedy little hands.
There’s something fundamentally wrong, for me, about not having your regular post inserted inside your home – it’s just plain creepy.