Dialogue: It pays to take care of your mailbox

By JENNY LYNCH*

The notice on the letter-box left no room for doubt. "No ****ing junk mail," it said. This rude message was one of several surprises during a stint delivering community notices. The experience has given me new respect for posties.

Forget about aggressive dogs. Letter-boxes themselves can pose unexpected problems.

Take the hard-to-find letter-box, for instance. It is buried in shrubbery of the prickly variety and you just about need leather gauntlets to get to it unscathed.

Then there is the snapping-turtle letter-box. The tightly hinged metal flap covering the opening snaps shut so viciously that, after forcing your letter into the slot, you must pull your hand away with all possible speed if you want it to survive with skin intact.

The tight-lipped letter-box presents a similar challenge. The object of this metal box with pencil-line slit appears to be to limit the amount of correspondence it can receive.

Just the opposite is the open-mouthed letter-box. This model is usually set into a concrete or brick pillar. While the slot in front is particularly generous, there's a catch. You thrust your offering through - and it shoots straight out the open back on to the grass to be chewed by the family dog, reduced to a pulp in the rain or whipped away by a gust of wind.

Some people appear actively to discourage mail. Perhaps they never expect anything more exciting than telephone and power bills. The owners of open-mouthed boxes evidently don't care whether letters reach them or not.

The thing is that people in general do not always pay enough attention to their letter-boxes. During my rounds in our modest, middle-class suburb, I was amazed not only by the failure of many households to clear their mail regularly but also by the neglected state of a lot of the boxes.

It goes without saying that run-down properties are likely to sport run-down letter-boxes. But overflowing, peeling, bashed-in boxes, covered in lichen and leaning at crazy angles, don't always go hand in hand with overgrown gardens and rusty car wrecks on front lawns.

Even the letter-boxes of the reasonably affluent can be poorly maintained. When a lick of paint might be all it would take to bring them up to scratch (letter-boxes incidentally can be bought for as little as $25) you would have to wonder why.

It's a shame, really, because Aucklanders don't realise what a potential treasure they have at their front gates.

Some years ago, I joined a bus-load of American tourists on a coach tour of the city. The Americans, mostly from the Mid-west, were on a whirlwind visit. You know the kind of thing - five countries in 10 days. They were seriously jet-lagged.

Having ascertained that they weren't in Australia and couldn't expect to find kangaroos hopping along the berms, they settled back to gaze blearily out the window at what Auckland had to offer. Our driver took us to the usual scenic spots - Mt Eden, the Domain, the harbourside beaches.

Then came a foray into Paritai Drive. This, he announced proudly, was millionaires' row - the creme-de-la creme of Auckland housing.

The tourists were unimpressed. Nothing unusual here; nothing they hadn't seen hundreds of times at home. But wait - what were these little things with pointed roofs? Could they be bird-nesting boxes? Miniature dolls' houses? Oh, how darling.

The driver was commanded to stop. The Americans piled out, cameras at the ready. All excitement, they clicked away, taking pictures ... of Paritai Drive letter-boxes.

To people accustomed to getting mail through simple slots in their front doors, letter-boxes were a novelty and the highlight of their tour.

Which leads me to wonder whether this city might be missing out on a potent tourist attraction. Just think - letter-boxes could become to Auckland what brightly painted Georgian front doors are to Dublin or cuckoo clocks to Zurich. Imagine postcards featuring unusual letter-boxes, letter-box keyrings, paperweights and lucky charms. Food for thought, perhaps.

On a more down-to-earth note, can I make a plea to householders on behalf of posties and anyone else with material to deliver: cut away the shrubbery surrounding the hard-to-find boxes and get rid of those snapping turtle and tight-lipped horrors. And while you're at it, why not also beef up the security of your letter-box?

* Jenny Lynch is an Auckland writer.