Nor Rain, Nor Sleet, Nor Heavy Equipment...

I don't care what you say, I love the United States Postal Service.  Well, let me rephrase that:  I love our hometown Post Office and mail carrier. 

Our mailbox is.... well..... perhaps not entirely "up to code".  We went for a few weeks without a mailbox and just had our things delivered to Grandma's house.  Then, we upgraded to a reallllllly classy mailbox that Wesley found at an abandoned house.  He drove a steel post into the ground and wrapped one piece of bailing wire around the post in the ground and the post attached to the mailbox.  (The rusted-out post on the mailbox was too short to stick into the ground.)  One piece of wire proved to be insufficient for holding a mailbox upright in high winds.  Many times we would come home to find our beloved box laying on the ground, but our mailman was always faithful in his delivery, no matter how erect (or not) it may be that particular day.  (We now have TWO pieces of wire wrapped around it!)

A few weeks ago a cattle truck was backing down our road to the pens to load out some cattle for us.  The poor man never saw our beloved mailbox and sideswiped it, scraping it along his cattle pot the entire length of the trailer.  Wesley and I noticed that evening that instead of facing due west, it had simply swiveled to face south.  Whew.  Thank goodness we had the good sense to engineer ours with a super-swivel feature.  Any other "typical" mailbox that had been permanently set in concrete would have been obliterated.  That's us, always thinking.  And again, our mailman delivered our belongings regardless of the direction. 

I sometimes wonder what he thinks of our family or if every delivery holds the same sort of surprises on a daily basis. 

There has been extensive road construction happening along our road.  Some sort of fiber optic cable is being laid in the ground and therefore a trench has to be dug to lay the line in.  Guess where our mailbox is at?!?!  I came home yesterday to find that our mailbox had been moved and was laying in the middle of our front yard, behind the bulldozer but in front of the track hoe.  I figured that our mail had probably been delivered to Grandma's, but why not check.... just in case.  I walked over, kicked it to a position where I could access the door, and sure enough - our mail was safely tucked away inside.  I thought that surely he must have delivered it earlier in the day, before it was on the ground..... but something told me that I had better double check. 

I walked over to the construction crew (we beginning to become good friends) and asked them when and how the mailman had delivered our mail. 

"Well," one man said, "he had to get out of his pickup, and it took him a bit to find it, but he got her done.  Maybe we should have told him it was behind the bulldozer."

Again - I love our mailman :)