The Mailbox

My mailbox

Like many folks here in Virginia, we've had trouble with mail delivery.

Some days we don't get it. Sometimes it is here by noon. Other times it shows up sometime after 5 p.m.

Lately we've been very hit or miss with the mail, but not enough to concern me. I have switched most of my important stuff to online notices out of necessity, since the mail has become rather unreliable. The mail is like newspapers in that they are doing themselves in with their own efforts at downsizing. Video killed the radio star, indeed.

My two senators, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, have been vocal about reversing any changes to USPS that have affected the reliability of mail delivery. They've been trying to have improvement since 2020.

They don't seem to be having much of an effect on the quality of the mail service.

Yesterday, our neighbor called the local post office to find out why he wasn't getting mail. The postmaster told him that all of us in this area have mailboxes that are too low. She was going to hold the mail until this was fixed.

His response was to ask why we weren't notified so we could fix the problem prior to her holding the mail. According to him, she grew very irate with him, and they exchanged words. She did, however, tell him he had until the middle of June to fix the problem and if it wasn't fixed, she would stop his mail delivery again.

Then he went out and started measuring mailboxes. My husband found him measuring ours when he came in for his dinner.

Rural mailboxes apparently should be between 41" and 45" high. Ours is 36" high, which is what it has been since we installed it in 1987. Maybe that was the required height back then.

The USPS has these new van things, courtesy of expenditures of Postmaster General DeJoy. They sit up higher than a car. I am assuming this is why the height of mailboxes suddenly matter.

It does seem like my neighbor asked a logical question. This is the post office, after all. How hard would it have been to slip a postcard in the mailbox that said, "Your mailbox must be 41" to 45" high. If it is not fixed by X date, delivery will cease."

My husband was quite upset about this last night. He is in the middle of trying to cut, rake, and bale hay, which is very time consuming and labor intensive. He doesn't need anything else on his mind right now.

After dinner, I looked up various pages on the USPS website, such as missing mail, delayed mail, and rural delivery. There was nothing about mailbox height on those pages. Finally, I typed in "how high should my mailbox be" in Google, and way down on the results page was a USPS page about mailbox height.

But before I found that, because I could not easily find anything about mailbox height on the USPS website, I had dashed off a quick note to my two state senators. One of the things I learned when I was a journalist was not to wait. So, I didn't.

My husband rose early this morning and was at Lowes when they opened so he could buy what he needed to raise our mailbox.

At lunchtime, he called the local post office to find out about this problem for himself and to ask for one of those time extensions. He found the postmaster to be pleasant, helpful, and very willing to give him a month to fix the issue. She said the notices had gone out in March, but when at least seven different families around us say they received no notice, I am inclined to think said notice did not go out.

The postmaster was so nice that almost as soon as my husband hung up, she called right back to say that our mail was being delivered today and nothing would be held.

My husband was amused, and he looked at me. "Do you think those emails you sent out last night had anything to do with that?" he asked. "Somebody's said something to her. She sure has a different attitude from what the neighbor said."

I shrugged. "No way to know."

But it wouldn't be the first time I've dropped a line and made a change.

Never underestimate the power of a well-placed word.

Update: I understand several of the neighbors have gone into the post office and had words with the postmaster. It should be clear to her by now that this area did not receive whatever notification she thinks she sent out.