Monday, February 10, 2014

THE MISSING MAILBOX

"Here's one for you," began an email message from Hallie this afternoon.

She continued:
Nick and I stopped by the house today to check on the sewer work. On our way out, a van approached very slowly and then stopped in front of the house and rolled down the window.

"Are you the new owners?" asked the woman in a Norwegian accent. We affirmed and she went on about how excited she was for us and that it was such a cute house. She had her eye on it, but was told there was an offer already. Her name was Heidi and she was in her late 40s and wore her grayish brown hair in dread locks.

"I looked around and saw the mailbox under a bush in the back" she said in her sing-song voice. "Ya, the mailbox is under a bush, I'll show yooo." She pulled over and hopped out of the van and showed us the way to the very back of the yard and crouched to peek into the inside of a leafy bush/tree. "It's there!"

And sure enough, she produced the mailbox that we had been sorry to discover missing.

How about that. Its a little rough, and I don't know whether it will even be worth restoring, but it might find a place somewhere as a conversation piece.

[In the picture of the house, you can see the mailbox beside the front steps. Nick and Hallie had noticed it was missing and had no idea it would turn up. KW]

5 comments:

Chris said...

Oh, I hope you can rehabilitate that mail box and use it! It's perfect with the house. How strange that it was removed and then hidden right on the property.

(And on a related note, when we moved into the house we had before this one, we discovered that not only had the previous owners taken the mailbox, but the post it was attached to! Dan was super busy at work, so for the first week or so, our newly purchased mail box was tied to a sawhorse at the curb. They also took the mirror over the sink in the main bath. People can be very strange...)

Kathy said...

So true, Chris. I told Hallie that it's too bad that mailbox can't talk. Oh the stories it could tell.

Hallie said...

I'll look into the cost of having it stripped and powder coated. It would be special to use it, but the locking mechanism is missing/broken. I'm not sure how hard it would be to have that repaired. This might be a project for a later date...we'll see!

Kathy said...

If it were me -- which, of course, it isn't -- but if were me, I'd think twice about using it. After all, it's been tampered with at least once. The next time it might be permanently missing. It was cute on the house, though.

M/W said...

That's such a neat box it begs to be restored. Even if you don't use it as a mailbox it would be a great inside display.