Pony Express

Not really.  The mail will come by means of vehicle driven by a rural mail carrier for roadside delivery.  The Post Office Box in town will be abandoned after the lease is up this summer. 

With the advent of retirement and permanent, year-round living here at The Platz we now sport this handsome-looking mail box on the north side of the road and at the end of the driveway.   We up-sized so that it can handle small packages.  It's going to be interesting wrangling the forwarding of mail from the former address in the Naked City and the PO Box to this address.  But that can be figured-out later.

Anyway, mail boxes in rural America have a limited life expectancy - with most of them suffering a violent death at the hands of the county plow.  

Don't take my word for this - just drive around and you will find all sorts of mail boxes held-together with bailing wire, splints or elaborately constructed of almost indestructible (and very expensive) hinged, steel posts and arms that can stand-up against the wrath of the snowplow. 

For these reasons that this installation (and possibly first iteration) went to the lowest bidder.  The most expensive item happens to the be the box itself.

The post was crafted from a 4 by 4 length of cedar.

click on images for a closer look

I added some long lag bolts to the post to serve as rebar.

The bucket was free - I fetched it from the ditch a couple of years ago .

And I mixed-up 120 pounds of QUIKRETE^® concrete mix to fill the bucket to over-flowing.

There's buried power lines and phone lines underneath this location so there's no way this hombre was going to dig a hole.  Moreover, my hypothesis is that there's enough ballast in the five gallon pail to prevent the contraption from tipping-over in a gale.  And theoretically, if the county plow comes barreling down the highway at 70 miles an hour kicking-up a wall of flying snow - at worst the box and post will simply fall-over.  And it would be a small matter to lift it upright as it's not attached to the ground.  That's the theory anyway. 

Stay tuned.....