Recently, I replaced our battered mailbox. Began scraping around the old post… and struck something.
A chain. Rusted. It’s buried at about eight inches below the surface.
First thought? Buried treasure. Second thought? What the hell is this thing attached to? It was an old post that anchored a rural mailbox.
Rural Mailbox: What’s an Anchor?
It’s a chain clipped to a metal anchor, coated in cement below ground, and connected to the bottom of the mailbox post.
Why? Because people had actually been abusing mailboxes. Truck-driving types found it the height of hilarity to knock mailboxes over or plow into them.
So homeowners fought back. Quietly. Creatively. Rural mailbox anchors ensured that anyone who hit that mailbox left with an alarming dent in the bumper — or worse.
Rural Justice… One Mailbox at a Time
I’d grown up witnessing mailboxes be flattened. Rows could vanish overnight.
Folks got creative. Concrete-filled posts. Steel pipes instead of wood. Terrorists after all loaded what they must have thought were the strongest existing truck bombs, buried under beams heavy enough to stop a truck.
One man welded rebar spikes around his post. Someone once attempted to back into it… their bumper didn’t make it.
