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Show Vi p i v":'4'I ' I anil nutillxtxt s tV j v , ! 4 ! i ' ' ; ?r ITS JUST not possible to ).( C' 4 IWV 1 ' , r ' 'f 4 i M b yx - " ' f .v .. n V ' motor through Americas farm and ranch lands without noticing the familiar silver-grey- , breadloafshaped mailboxes edging the roads still served by Rural Free Delivery mail service. 1 . Uv.i - j It IS possible to ignore their drab uniformity, until you happen though onto a particularly colorful or imaginative mailbox. - . J One prettified box in a Sc seems to Perhaps a fresh coat of bright paint to cover a scarred box was enough to set the rest of the community to sprucing up. or keeping up. They may be ornately lettered, d with Western motifs, painted garishly or with designs Tole-lik- e psychedelically, covered with Frequently rural mailbox owners mount the basic breatiloaf shaped box on the most fanciful of bases, like those shown on this page. Others include barrows, awls and -- various Kit PlaniMT iron designs. or or even adhesive-backe- d wallpaper. Even the shape of the boxes is an the perfect inspiration covered wagon or replica of an old locomotive are preferred; theyd like them painted white, and to be of adequate size and strength, with neat letter- ing. etc. However, in small print: A postmaster can approve of specially constructed boxes when owners for esthetic or other reasons do not wish to use an approved manufactured box. When RFD began as an experiment in 1896, the mail was dropped into oil cans, apple crates or buck ets nailed to a fence . .as long as it could be reached without the driver alighting from his wagon. There were mixed emotions about the new service. Farmers met and socialized and shopped in the Post Officegeneral store combination. Now w hat would they do? IT WAS soon evident, however, that their buck-boar- d mailman was not just an impersonal deliveryman. He brought the engine. families news, weather reTHERE ARE governports. birth announcement regulations (of ments, the price of eggs course!) to stifle this crea- - and who was reaping his live urge. The manual - harvest. He sold stamps and envelopes and news- clearly states that metal, ... boxes approval-stampe- d Kit Flannery, a freelance writer , lives in Hyde Park, Utah. paper subscriptions. He ran errands and delivered messages. In turn, patrons left him gifts, money, a dozen eggs in the box to augment his meager pay. The errand Perhaps most startling serv ice turned out to be are not the boxes them far better than the mail selves, but the pieces service in time, and so was which support them. In brought to a halt, as were a place of the ordinary steel r food service or cedar fence post, there and a library might be welded pipes, book service. augers, newel posts, Politics, community, aluminum drain gutters, welded chains, driftwood, hierarchy population detree stumps, anchors, elk and deternsity geography mined the mail routes in antlers, chrome bumpers auand other cast-of- f those days. If you lived too tomobile parts. far out in the boondocks, Not surprisingly, disyou simply didnt get served. If you didnt keep carded farm implements are common pedestals. your road passable, you were dropped from the Wagon wheels probably route. If you lived at the rate number one in this end of the line or were not category. But jouTI also an influential member of water see the area, it might be dark pumps, cream separators, before you received your plows, hay mows, disk mail. Today, small hamharrows, potbelly stoves, lets decide among themand herbicide sprayers selves w hether or not they often further embellished desire post office or mailwith horseshoes and box delivery. hames. THE SUPPORTS are MOST RURAL boxes are planted into the ground since much of the mail is magazines, or into a cement base, and s and very frequently stuck into papers, a milk can, lard bucket or packages. The supports wheel. Other boxes are under the box also sport casually nailed to a telenewspaper cylinders. A phone pole, set on a fence few may have a basket or or dangle from a tree shelf attached; s ludicrous branch or sign. of this is the exaggeration family that usurped a wire mail-orde- short-live- d king-size- d "wish-book- market push-car- f ' Irv. "Ki , t' 'V, , a ' 3 .'' V.- - O.-- ,- , , v But no matter what farfetched designs you might find in your travels through rural America, none is likely to top the one in Hoytsville, Utah. Two very ordinary boxes for one family. One for very ordinary mail, and the other, double-barrelle- d air mail, labelled perches expectantly on a pole! t, f.v s ... ip a "j r . '1 cemented it out front and attached its mailbox thereto. In areas where winter weather is severe, many of the boxes are perched on a slanted or arching base to facilitate snow removal. , - V v v ri V 4 'ti 4 u- . 'oJ I |
