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and now it starts to melt
Feb. 23rd, 2021 10:35 amThere were a couple of inches of wet snow on Monday morning, but today we have high temps near 40F, occasional sun, light wind. The snow will be much less deep this evening. The across-the-street neighbor had his tractor mounted snowblower out this morning, and cleared out our mailbox area as he was doing his. I'm quite grateful for that, as the snow there is all packed down and icy and wet and heavy and hard for me to deal with. J sometimes remembers to do it, but usually only when he's expecting a package. DB and I have already helped dig out the mailman once this year - he missed the turn into the driveway when he hit a slippery spot on the road.
Our mailbox got taken out a couple of weeks ago - there's a bend in the road, and if westbound drivers miss it they wind up going across our front yard, and the driver claimed that when he turned the steering wheel one of the tires started to slip on some packed snow and the traction control lost its mind and he lost all control of the car and thus slid sideways into the mailbox. Which is a good thing, really, because if the mailbox hadn't been there he'd have hit the driveway culvert and done a lot of damage to the car, rather than just flattening a tire and denting a quarterpanel. A dude going by in a pickup truck was able to pull him out of the ditch so we didn't have to wait for a tow truck.
We did have to replace the mailbox post in February, though, but Menard's has post holders with a spike on the bottom that are designed to be pounded into the ground, no hole digging needed. We'll replace it this spring, probably. I was reminded that we don't actually have a backup mailbox in the garage. OTOH, we're only on the third mailbox at this house, and the first two rusted out - we had to pound one back into shape when the neighborhood hooligans went down the street with a baseball bat banging on the mailboxes, but it lasted another few years after that. The current box has been out there for six or seven years. I bet if we spent more than $10 on a mailbox it'd not rust out so quickly. But then it'd get hit more often. (because isn't that the way it works? Dad put in a better-than-basic mailbox when I was a kid, and within a year it'd been hit twice. The last time he put up a cheap one, and it rusted out 15 years later.)
Our mailbox got taken out a couple of weeks ago - there's a bend in the road, and if westbound drivers miss it they wind up going across our front yard, and the driver claimed that when he turned the steering wheel one of the tires started to slip on some packed snow and the traction control lost its mind and he lost all control of the car and thus slid sideways into the mailbox. Which is a good thing, really, because if the mailbox hadn't been there he'd have hit the driveway culvert and done a lot of damage to the car, rather than just flattening a tire and denting a quarterpanel. A dude going by in a pickup truck was able to pull him out of the ditch so we didn't have to wait for a tow truck.
We did have to replace the mailbox post in February, though, but Menard's has post holders with a spike on the bottom that are designed to be pounded into the ground, no hole digging needed. We'll replace it this spring, probably. I was reminded that we don't actually have a backup mailbox in the garage. OTOH, we're only on the third mailbox at this house, and the first two rusted out - we had to pound one back into shape when the neighborhood hooligans went down the street with a baseball bat banging on the mailboxes, but it lasted another few years after that. The current box has been out there for six or seven years. I bet if we spent more than $10 on a mailbox it'd not rust out so quickly. But then it'd get hit more often. (because isn't that the way it works? Dad put in a better-than-basic mailbox when I was a kid, and within a year it'd been hit twice. The last time he put up a cheap one, and it rusted out 15 years later.)
