Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 6, 1991 TAG: 9103060230
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
For with the onset of warm weather - particularly those first intoxicatingly balmy nights - comes the rising tide of testosterone in the teen-age male body. And with that first glandular rush comes the urge to destroy. And with that yen to mash comes the need for a defenseless foil.
Behold the rural mailbox. Standing alone along an unlit road, important but not so valuable that its devastation will spur cops to dust for prints or box owners to open fire.
Given a 2-by-4 and a set of pectorals fired by the flush of the season's first Old Milwaukee, the meekest suburban high schooler turns into a Master of Mailbox Mayhem. Under the cover of darkness, of course.
The mailbox stands little chance. Against lumber. Against baseball bats; minor explosives; passing fenders; or even - with three or more Old Milwaukees blended with the testosterone, a dash of adrenaline and a twist of moxie - a fist.
The mortally wounded mailbox would be found by the first light of day.
Until now. Until Lewis Hopkins, patron saint of rural mailboxes.
He has seen too many innocent boxes smashed by vandals.
Hopkins, of Roanoke County, has designed, and now hopes to sell, a mailbox that will withstand the season's first rush of male power surge.
It will do more than that. It will withstand a direct hit from a Silkworm missile and could be the only thing left standing if the end of your driveway is at ground zero for the next hydrogen bomb drop. Without so much as a crease.
The Lewis Hopkins mailbox is built of quarter-inch steel.
"They build buildings out of this stuff!" says Hopkins, pounding one of his beauties with his open palm (a fist smack would cost a knuckle).
It weighs 50 pounds, not counting the equally steel post, which weighs an additional 35 pounds. Hopkins suggests planting the post in 80 pounds of concrete.
He has bashed it with sticks, shot it with guns and detonated a stick of dynamite inside. The mailbox still was standing and still ready for Ed McMahon's next mailing.
The postmaster general tested it. He opened and shut the door 7,000 times (about a decade's worth). He sprayed the box with saltwater mist for two weeks to see if it would rust. He tried to crush it. He checked for the little red flag.
Hopkins' box passed muster.
"It may be overkill, but when people are going down your road with baseball bats and bottles, one of the other ones would just be gone," he says. "Lots of people have had lots of boxes destroyed."
No more. For about $205, Hopkins will sell them a mailbox that could double as a fallout shelter for a Pekingese.
They come only in black. Hopkins is the Henry Ford of mailbox makers.
But it looks like any other rural mailbox. Which means you may want to set out on the porch this first balmy night and watch for the first mob of testosterone surfers. They're in for a surprise.
by CNB