Mailboxes and Baseball bats

Years ago, my parents made the decision to save their money and buy their next house with cash. Dave Ramsey would love them. While working towards this goal, they decided to buy a brand new stately mailbox to be erected at the new house. This mailbox became a symbol of their dream and goal. The new mailbox sat in the box in a storage shed for two to three years while they continued to save money, and lived a little below their means.

Finally, they bought a house which was a foreclosure. One of the first things that they did after buying the new house was to install the new mailbox. For them, this was their own private symbol of a goal achieved.

A lot of people assume that every foreclosed house is an automatic cheap buy. But that isn’t always the case. It all depends on the amount of leverage that was on the house to begin with and how much money has been paid on the loan. For this house, it was a good buy, but it was in no way cheap.

We had almost finished moving into the house when we went out of town for my sister’s wedding. When we returned, my dad stopped by the old house on his way home to pick up a couple of things. The rest of the family went on to the new house. We noticed that our new mailbox was missing off of the post. How odd!

My dad finally made it home to the new house and he brought something surprising with him--our new mailbox. He had found it in the driveway of our old house. Not only had someone taken it to our old house, but they had
beaten the new mailbox with a baseball bat. It was pulverized. My dad said that when he saw the mailbox beaten like it was, it scared him into thinking that someone had vandalized our new house as well. But whoever had torn up the mailbox had not torn up the house. We were thankful for that.

My parents notified the Chief of Police in the small town where we lived and a few days passed.

Two of our brand new neighbors came over a couple of days later with a box. Inside the box was a brand new mailbox. They had heard about what had happened and had gone out to find a replacement mailbox for our family. They presented it to us and informed us that they would install it. They wanted to welcome us to the neighborhood and had been horrified to find out what had happened. They didn’t want us to think that we weren’t welcome. That was such an uplifting gift that it helped to erase the sting and hurt for the vandalism that had occurred.


copyright 2011 by Kathy Robbins