This simple mailbox is my talisman.
It's the absurdidity of it which gives me a smile, every time I see it.
The mailbox is in Mayberry, along the Missouri River bottom. Immediately behind are bluffs. In front, some distance away, is the water treatment plant and acres of cornfields. There is no conceivable reason for this mailbox to exist, yet every spring someone, from somewhere, repaints it.
During the spring floods of 1993 this area was 10 feet under water. This photo is was taken less than a half mile upstream. A 500 year levee gave way suddenly and devestated northern and western Mayberry. The west was mostly light manufacturing and offices space. North was farmland.
In their hubris, the Feds threw LOTS of money at the levee, to create a 1000 year levee, making the river more dangerous. Mercifully the confluence with the Mississippi is not far downstream.Since we are now so well protected, the nations wealthiest family built the largest outdoor mall in the flood plain.
Long before my days are over, the northern cornfields will be plowed under and the land suburbanized. My mailbox will probably still stand.
Toad
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