Good Morning, Class of ‘64
Mailboxes in Late Winter
Jeffrey Harrison
It’s a motley lot. A few
still stand
at attention like sentries
at the ends
of their driveways, but more
lean
askance as if they’d just
received a blow
to the head, and in fact
they’ve received
many, all winter, from jets
of wet snow
shooting off the curved,
tapered blade
of the plow. Some look
wobbly, cocked
at oddball angles or
slumping forlornly
on precariously listing
posts. One box
bows steeply forward, as if
in disgrace, its door
lolling sideways, unhinged.
Others are dented,
battered, streaked with
rust, bandaged in duct tape,
crisscrossed with
clothesline or bungee cords.
A few lie abashed in
remnants of the very snow
that knocked them from their
perches.
Another is wedged in the
crook of a tree
like a birdhouse, its post
shattered nearby.
I almost feel sorry for
them, worn out
by the long winter,
off-kilter, not knowing
what hit them, trying to
hold themselves
together, as they wait for
news from spring.
Have you ever seen a child when they are so tired they are annoyingly silly? Have you ever been downright tired and silly yourself?
Let me tell you, there are mailboxes along many a country road that have had it up to here with winter! They are dad-blasted tired. They have been bumped and battered and pushed and shoved till they're feeling like a boxer in a ring with a chimpanzee (thanks, Larry). 
The ruckus you've been hearing during the early morning hours, waking you from a sound sleep, was that stand of mailboxes down the road telling mailman jokes and laughing themselves silly. Never mind that if it weren't for that man or that woman driving by and
stuffing them with all sorts of paper junk, they'd be thrift store finds and placed in somebody's garden to hold old, rusty tools. They would probably be painted pink or purple, too.
Speaking of silly, some of the songs you old codgers, and fine ladies, too, bent your ears to back in the fifties and sixties were fall-down-on-the-floor-and-writhe-from-one-side-to-the-other silly. The writers of those songs had to be so tired they wouldn't have been able to rest well in Grandma's feather bed or the best bed and breakfast in the country. Is there any other way to explain Flying Purple People Eater?
Silly
Season
The Purple People Eater
Reached #1 in the Billboard pop charts
Reached #4 on the Cashbox country listing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Purple_People_Eater
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Purple_People_Eater
The Purple People Eater - Sheb Wooley - 1958
“We’re all a little weird.
And life is a little weird.
And when we find someone
whose
weirdness is compatible with
ours,
we join up with them and
fall into
mutually satisfying
weirdness—
and call it love—true love.”
Robert Fulghum
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