Rural Mail Boxes

I didn't realize how busy we were this past week until I was talking with a friend this afternoon. I started to run down the list after she asked and boy have we been busy. The cantaloupes got watered. We rebuilt a road. (The bus driver for Raul's kids said it had been getting rough. Under drought rules the neighbor had not been watering the road all summer and it had gotten pretty bad. We put up new racks and shelving in the shop and built a new work bench. The trees got fertilized and watered. Go, go, go.
   This next week we'll start cutting bolls and scheduling cotton defoliation. It won't be long. 

Do you notice anything unusual about this picture? I mean besides the fact it is not a farm picture.

What's inside? Doesn't that look like a bike rack where you can lock your bike?
Then why is there a lockable cage around the locking bike rack?
This just showed up at a new medical building in town. I don't think it is a good sign. Have we come to the point where we need to lock our bikes on a rack, inside a lockable cage? The old timers around here tell stories of when they left their houses unlocked. That reminded me of a radio piece I did a few years ago-

Mail Boxes

By Paul H. Betancourt

Copyright April, 2012

                  Rural mail boxes are a quiet sign of the deterioration of our society. The next time you drive though the country side, please notice the mail boxes.

                  My old mail box was a simple galvanized mail box with a red metal flag set in an old milk can like you might have seen in Mayberry.  Some idiot bashed it in on night. So, I fixed it, and…it go bashed in, again. Arrrgh. So I armored it up with some old well casing. It doesn’t look as nice, but is it bullet proof.

                  After that I noticed that neighbors all over the Valley had done the same thing. Some are very pretty; they are done in brick or stone. Some are merely functional, like mine.

                  What  people forget is a generation ago people in the country didn’t even lock their doors at night.  And now I have to armor up my mail box?

                  I must be getting to be one of those crabby old guys. I see things changing, slowly, and not for the better. Today’s rural mail boxes are silent testimony to a sad change in our society.