New mailbox-post

The new mailbox-post. (Old mailbox and broken post in foreground.) (Photo by BobbaLew.)

My mailbox-post, and mailbox, are hereby replaced.
A couple weeks ago somebody, probably the guy who mows my neighbor’s lawn across the street, backed into my mailbox-post and broke it below ground-level.
My guess it was him because he would try to fix it; he’s like that, a nice guy. He returned later to repair it.
He surrounded the broken post with steel angle-iron, so it would stand up although it was still broken.
That wasn’t the first time that post was broken. A town snowplow hit it a couple years ago, and broke the horizontal arm the mailbox sits on.
The town came out and repaired it, probably at the behest of my neighbor across-the-street. I’d had the mailbox sitting on a snowbank.
They reassembled the arm to my mailbox-post with screwed-in wooden splices.
It seemed okay I (we) used it that way for years.
The actual mailbox is huge.
I did that big because occasionally we’d get large packages.
I don’t want large packages left out unattended in the rain.
That post was almost as old as the house, probably 20 years old. (The house is 22 years old.)
The actual mailbox was number-five or so. A snowplow might hit the mailbox and render it unusable.
The mailbox was screwed at its base into a piece of 2-by-12 planking on the horizontal arm.
Every mailbox I’ve had seemed to have the same base-holes. A replacement mailbox screwed into the same screw-holes.
This time the mailbox outlasted the post.
It had been slightly damaged by a car sliding on ice; it didn’t wanna stay shut.
But it had a clamp closing-tab I could adjust to make it stay shut.
But this time it was the post that was rendered unusable.
I thought the mailbox was repaired — it was standing — but I discovered the post was broken when I caught the mailbox with my lawnmower and toppled it.
An old friend, who daycares my dog, agreed to help me replace the post.
He’s younger, and I’m old (68); we used to work side-by-side at the Messenger Newspaper, and now he helps me since my wife died. (I’m sort of a wreck.)
I purchased a new post.
I disassembled what I could, but left enough in place so the Post-Office could deliver that morning’s mail.
Mail received, that guy arrived about 2:30, and we began taking everything apart.
The 2-by-12 plank I had the mailbox screwed to broke as we removed it from the arm. So we’d have to replace it or splice it together.
The 2-by-12 had been narrowed about a quarter-inch to fit the mailbox, so new construction would similarly have to be trimmed.
We butted two 2-by-6s together to be the width of that 2-by-12, and then made splices for the 2-by-6s to sit on.
We also ripped about a half-inch off one 2-by-6.
The splices would be nailed to the horizontal arm of the new mailbox-post, then the 2-by-6s nailed to the splices into the arm.
The post was longer than my original, so the post-hole needed to be deeper.
My friend had brought his post-hole digger.
We deepened the hole about a foot, and then six more inches because the mailbox was still too high.
Sunk into place, the new post was floppy, so we aligned it with hammered-in stakes.
“Still got a mailbox?” my friend’s wife asked at her pet-grooming shop as I picked up my dog this afternoon (Tuesday, October 23rd, 2012) after the YMCA. (They had day-cared the dog.)
“We’ll see,” I said. “Looked substantial to me last night; I even took a photograph!” (Above.)

• RE: “I (we)......” —My beloved wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17, 2012. Like me she was 68. I miss her dearly.
• The “Messenger” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired almost seven years ago. Best job I ever had — I worked there almost 10 years (over 11 if you count my time as an post-stroke unpaid intern [I had a stroke October 26, 1993, from which I recovered fairly well]). (“Canandaigua” [“cannan-DAY-gwuh”] is a small city nearby where I live in Western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” —It’s about 14 miles away.)
• I work out in the Canandaigua YMCA Exercise-Gym, appropriately named the “Wellness-Center,” usually three days per week, about two-three hours per visit. To do so I have to daycare my dog.