If you live in the country you probably share a bond with everyone else who lives outside city limit signs. This common denominator is the lowly mailbox. Since prehistoric times (which means longer than I can remember) the mailbox has been our link with the outside world.

Unlike our city friends, rural mailboxes have character. In town, a mailbox may be just a slot in the front door or a metal box on the front porch. Country mailboxes have character. Mailboxes are a sentry assigned to a lonely outpost far from the home campfire. The job of a mailbox usually is a lonely one. A few are lucky enough to be grouped with others at a central location. There, folks come to gather it’s contents and visit with other box owners who schedule their trips so they can bump into the neighbors.

Most mailboxes, however, get tougher duty. They sit out by the road on a solitary post waiting for some sort of action. That action usually is a daily visit from the mail carrier and another from the box owner. Once in a rare while the visits aren't as pleasant. Hunters occasionally mistake them for a deer or whatever else they intended to shoot. Teenagers have been known to get mailboxes and baseballs confused, too. This confusion can lead to good things, though. One of my very own nephew, years ago, learned to pull weeds at the county fairgrounds under close legal supervision after he became confused between a low, inside pitch and a steel mailbox. He lost interest in swinging at both after “school” was over.

Mailboxes, you see, are protected by law. They should be. Without mailboxes what would letter carriers do with all of our junk mail? By the way, did you ever wonder why they are called letter carriers? When was the last time you pulled a letter out of the stack of bills, pizza coupons and envelopes labeled “occupant”?

It has gotten much less exciting to visit the little tin shed on a pole lately. I hate to say it but I really don’t need a mailbox much anymore. Why pull on my overshoes, scotch cap and a heavy coat to trudge down the lane to the lonely mailbox just to get junk mail? Due to the wonders of modern technology I now have all that stuff delivered directly to my desk by a fax machine that constantly splits out information on zero percent mortgage loans and computer emails informing me of the hottest stock tips and ways to beat the IRS out of taxes.

I bet those IRS “tips” would get you a lot of tuition towards weed pulling school. Think I’ll keep visiting the box down by the road. It’s good exercise and who knows? Someday I might actually get a letter again.