I Laughed Till My Sides Ached

[crokett]

Some screwballs have been playing mailbox baseball in my area the last few weeks.

Last night I took the dogs outside and while they were putzin around a pickup comes around the bend slows down and I see a guy in the back with a baseball bat winding up. What he didn't know is my mailbox post is concrete. The driver herkey-jerked or something and the batter missed low and caught the cross-arm. Broke his bat and near knocked him out of the truck. I think it hurt him pretty good too cause there was a lot of swearing when they drove off.

[LCHIEN]

i hope you got the lic. no. as well.

[ironhat]

Not that I hope he's hurt but, I hope he's a hurtin' !!! We've had this problem on and off along the country roads. Now you see mail boxes with steel banding arched over them, mounted in brick casing, etc. It's good to hear a story like this, though. Thanks for the laugh!

[Bruce Cohen]

Wish I was there, haven't had a "live" moving target since I got back from SE Asia

[Uncle Cracker]

Happened on my block last year. I live on a cul-de-sac, and I was up late working when I heard them going down the street whacking boxes at about 2:30 AM. I knew they would be coming back down the other side in a couple of minutes, so I grabbed a carton of roofing nails and tossed the whole thing in the street. Sure enough, they ran right through the whole patch. I called the cops and went out to sweep up the remaining nails. The cops called me back later to take a report, and told me they found the truck about five miles down the road on four flats, and traced it back to the owner, who ratted out his two buddies to save his own ass. Get this... He was threatening to sue me for ruining a $1000 set of tires! My heart bleeds for him...

[John Hunter]

Heard of a guy that had several mail boxes destroyed this way. He built a new one from 1/2 plate steel and mounted it on the coil spring from a truck set in concrete!

[BobSch]

A buddy of mine lost two to creeps like that. His solution? a small mailbox mounted inside a larger one with concrete filling the gap and the whole thing mounted on a 4-inch concrete -filled pipe. His first victim broke his arm along with his bat hiting the thing.

[Pappy]

About a 3' chunk of 2x4 tossed from the bushes lengthwise, just above the hood, gets thier attention! DAMHIKT...

[Crash2510]

the snow plow always gets ours

I always thought it would be funny to build your heavy duty mailbox on a lazy susan that way when they hit it it would keep coming back like those annoying bobo dolls

saying hahahaha

[TheRic]

My dad delivered Rural Route Mail for decades. He told me about the one he liked the best it solved many problems. I hope I describe this correctly.

The mailbox was on the end of a long 90 bent metal pipe that swiveled. I'm guessing the pipe was about 1.5" the base of the pipe was slipped over another pipe, mounted in concrete. There was a cotter pin / shear pin to hold the two pipes together. On the other end was the mailbox. Coming up on the side of the mail box was a set of metal pipes (not as big) that held a metal plate to protect the mailbox.

The cotter pin / shear pin would break away if it was hit, pennies to replace the pin. The thing would shear if struck by any vehicle or snow plow or snow/ice. Being hit by a baseball bat would shear the pin if the guy was lucky. The metal plate / pipes on the side took the force of the hit.

Since the base sat back from the road several feet, it was hard for a vehicle to knock down a mailbox with a wide bumper. A wide bumper is a bumper that sticks out about 2' on the passenger side, sole purpose to knock down mailboxes.

Snow removal always seemed not to bother the thing, it just piled up underneath (better than others), verses knocking it down. Dad said that was always one mailbox that he didn't have to worry about getting to (too much snow piled up around to make a delivery without getting out of the car).

There were flowers planted under the pipe so the guy didn't have to mow under the overhang.