Come oh come ye tea-thirsty restless ones -- the kettle boils, bubbles and sings, musically. ~ Rabindranath Tagore
Welcome to New Jersey, where the Law of Winter sometimes outstrips the Law of Gravity.
This week, winter has at last been losing its fight to stay here and depress us long past the equinox. There's so much packed and frozen snow, though, that even though we've had a few days above freezing now, the Winter Mailbox is still in place. Well, to be perfectly honest, the Winter Mailbox now comes in at night and goes out again in the morning, so it doesn't slide into the street. Join me below the orange crampon and I'll show you.
Longtime community members may recall that last year, our issue was overly vigorous road plowing by the Township. Since it was too cold to replace the post, my dad's temporary solution involved a lot of duct tape and an ancient stepstool, which I later learned is a "mid-century modern" piece that, if cleaned up, could pay for a few mailboxes and should certainly not have been out at the edge of the road, daring the plow to take it out.
This year, however, our issue was snow and plenty of it, plus enough cold so that it never melted. There was a storm every few days, including 7 out of 9 weekends, and the plow berm closing off the driveway became harder to shovel through each time because there was nowhere to put the snow. The plow was having the same problem, and the road got narrower by quite a bit on each side. Not only was the mailbox protected from the plow, it was protected from the mailman! Rather than make him climb out of his truck and reach over the snow each day (and then do the same reach myself), I sat the trusty winter mailbox right on the snowbank, in front of the other one.
(Note that I went after last year's problem with the reflective tape. No idea how I'll retro-address this year's problem!)
Last Thursday and Friday, we had what I'd like to think was the grand finale winter storm of the season. On Thursday, I heard the mail truck coming down the hill (it's steep!) in the blinding snow. Then there was silence and then a lot of rrrrrr-rrrrrrr-rrrrrrr coming from just uphill. I looked out and saw that, in an effort to deliver to the house next door, the mail truck had slid nose-first into the snowbank and gotten wedged there.
I thought I'd go outside and wait in the driveway so that, when it got loose, the mailman could just hand me the mail and not have to try to pull over again, as that particular accumulation had laid down ice first and the road was especially awful. By the time I got out there, a small knot of middle-aged men had gathered. They did eventually manage to work the truck loose, but I was astonished that neither the driver nor any of the rest of them knew that stomping the accelerator as hard as possible, so as to spin the drive wheels, is not the best way to back out of a snow bank. They even brought over boards to stick under the wheels, but when you then floor it, all that happens is the boards shoot forward and threaten everyone's kneecaps. I am just an old lady and I don't know much about trucks, but I surely do know that I ought not offer truck advice to a bunch of guys, so I just stood in the snow and was entertained for ten minutes, and then I had hot coffee. It was indeed an excellent finale to the winter mail season!
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Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share part of the evening around a virtual kitchen table with kossacks who are caring and supportive of one another. So bring your stories, jokes, photos, funny pics, music, and interesting videos, as well as links—including quotations—to diaries, news stories, and books that you think this community would appreciate. Readers may notice that most who post diaries and comments in this series already know one another to some degree, but newcomers should not feel excluded. We welcome guests at our kitchen table, and hope to make some new friends as well.
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