A few years ago, our neighborhood switched to decorative mailboxes. Originally, we had plain black mailboxes, which were durable but not super attractive. The new ones? They were purty. Real purty. They were/are also super fragile. I’m on my second one (one of my neighbor’s friends accidentally bumped it with her car and it shattered like glass.) Our mail carrier shoves in mail (which is her job), but that has broken the clasp that holds the door shut. Most days, I use a rubber band. On rainy days, our mail gets soaked because it holds water like a reservoir.
My uncle gave my dad a mailbox as a wedding present. It was a plain box with his name (David L. Ramsey) on the top. That mailbox followed my parents around the country and was their mailbox until he moved out of the house for the nursing home (my mother unceremoniously replaced it). It served our family nearly 60 years.
I love our current mailbox — it is a good looking mailbox after all. And having them all match in the neighborhood is a good thing. But dad’s solid, less flashy version performed better over the long run.
There’s a life lesson there somewhere I think.