No Matching Mailboxes!

In early 2001, when my husband was being heavily courted by an organization in Nashville, Tennessee, the very nice people at this place flew the family to Nashville for a long weekend to wine and dine us in an effort to convince us – well, me – that we really, really wanted to move to Nashville. They put us up in a nice hotel, arranged guides and babysitters so we could see the area, look at real estate, go to dinner, and so on. It was a very nice weekend even if I was not convinced in the end.

On one of the days out with the real estate agent, she was driving us through neighborhoods that were perfectly nice, but something about them just felt off to me, something beyond it being Nashville (no offense to Nashville, really, I’m just not a Southerner, and it’s better for all of us that I realized that). About the fifteenth subdivision of the tour, I realized that in every neighborhood/subdivision, the homes all had matching mailboxes. I also realized that I felt that if I moved into one of these neighborhoods – perfectly nice, I’m sure – that I might as well move to Stepford. Matching and being alike according to regulations did not appeal to me at all. Too much matching with the neighbors makes me twitch.

I verbalized this to the agent, and thankfully she had a good sense of humor. She promptly drove us to some neighborhoods without matching mailboxes and I felt much better. For the rest of the day, it was a running joke, and a joke that continued into our house search where we live now.

I shouldn’t have been surprised that I was averse to matching mailboxes. Over the years I’ve painted custom mailboxes for housewarming gifts. When one we know earned master’s degree in architecture, I created a mailbox based on a Frank Lloyd Wright design. Another had the resident’s monogram in a clean, distinctive font. I don’t make them kitschy, but I try to make them fun. Just one of my things. I like designs that are graphic and contemporary. I can’t find any online links to painted mailboxes I like, but it’s NOT anything this.

When we moved into our current house, our mailbox on the rickety post of four mailboxes that serves our little neighborhood needed to be replaced. All the other mailboxes were black, so of course that would not do for me (I can be so annoying like that, I know). I bought a white mailbox and stenciled our name and house number on it in purple and blue. Just enough to stand out and be a little different without being gaudy.

Over the years we neighbors would say we should do something about the mailbox post, but never did. It was still perfectly functional, so until it fell over from a snowplow we’d just leave it. We said nothing about the mailboxes themselves. We were all individuals and could do what we wanted with the actual mailboxes. Then one set of neighbors moved across town to a larger house.

Enter the new neighbors.

Two summers ago we went camping in Quebec for vacation in late August. When we arrived home on the middle of a Thursday afternoon, the first thing we noticed as we pulled into our little road was a new mailbox post with four matching black mailboxes.

The twitching started.

Once we unloaded, I called one neighbor and asked what had happened to our mailboxes to have them replaced? Did a car hit them?

No, she replied, the new neighbor just did it one day, without mentioning it to anyone.

The twitching got worse.

To be fair, the mailboxes – and the new decorative road sign – look nice. They do. It’s just the matchy-matchy nature and the presumptiveness of it all that is irking me. It’s what they want, ergo they will do it without a thought to others. I’m sure they think they are doing us some great favor, but they aren’t. The most established neighbors, the ones who have been here 34 years now, are put off by it and think it’s just a little too much.

And yes, I know this is just so small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things. I know.

Anyway, after the new mailboxes went in, we joked for several weeks wondering how long until I could replace the boring black matching mailbox with something with color. Could I create a stencil and go out some evening and spray paint a design?

I knew, though, that I could do nothing without creating a major neighborhood issue, and I didn’t want to do that. A few weeks later, the boys retrieved my old white mailbox from that neighbor’s garage and now it sits in my garage, lonely.

I never did even mention the new mailboxes to those neighbors. I did make a point of asking them and the other neighbors if it would be okay with them if I put in some plantings at the entrance of the road, consciously treating them like I would want to be treated, hoping they would get the clue (of course not).

Meanwhile, every time I retrieve my mail from that matching mailbox, I twitch a little.