Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 13, 1991 TAG: 9103130173
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The world may. The highway department does not.
No sooner do we report here that Lewis Hopkins of Roanoke County has come up with the ultimate vandal-proof rural mailbox than the killjoys over at the highway department are crawling all over the breakthrough.
For those of you who haven't been following this issue, we'll remind you that with the arrival of warm weather, many innocent mailboxes stand to be beaten senseless by brave young men exercising their constitutional rights to youthful vandalistic expressionism.
Sadly, some people are fed up with this annual rite. To best profit on this annual trend, and its annual reaction, Lewis Hopkins of Roanoke County has devised the world's most awesome mailbox.
Made of steel a quarter-inch thick, with a post buried deep in concrete, this wicked little model could withstand shells fired from the U.S.S. Murderous Sucker.
It would seem a triumph of the forces of good, law-abiding mailbox erectors vs. the legions of lawless midnight mailbox destroyers.
But there are rules.
While transportation workers are as fascinated as the rest of us by mailboxes on plows, mailboxes wrapped in bricks, mailboxes on concrete pedestals and mailboxes riveted to girders, such containers may not necessarily be in the public's best interest.
Predictably, the Transportation Department has a full page of descriptions and specifications for the ideal mailbox, from the ideal post (4-by-4, wooden) to placement (behind the ditch).
Seems that some motorists have trouble from time to time staying between white lines, that sometimes they need more space and stray a bit from the map's route in a cloud of shoulder dust.
Virginia's Transportation Department has many photographs of test dummies with mailboxes embedded in their faces after test crashes involving test cars and test mailboxes.
Tests showed that dummies' heads lost the battle with test mailboxes nearly 100 percent of the time.
Lewis Hopkins' 35-pound steel mailbox could mean downright test decapitation, killjoys argue.
Mortal mailboxes weigh but a fraction of Hopkins' vandal-proof model.
All of which highlights that we, as a society, are obligated to protect not only those people who drive in mid-road, but must also be vigilant on behalf of those motorists who from time to time drift from the flow and drive on front lawns, across driveways and directly over mailboxes.
It is this sort of consideration which makes us not only the most considerate society ever to people the globe, but also the quickest to sacrifice the rights of mailboxes.
The precious, sacred right to drive off the side of the road without fear of injury stands protected.
The not-quite-so-precious right to protect a mailbox against cowardly thugs remains in doubt.
Do we live in a great place? Or what?
by CNB