Better boxes: Tri-Citians express themsevles with specialty mailboxes

By Joe Chapman, Herald staff writer

They say you are what you eat and the shoes tell the man.

But how about mailboxes as a personality barometer?

If it's just a plain ol' aluminum-looking thing or a standard black box with a flip-up lid, well, that probably doesn't say much. But throughout the Tri-Cities, there are a number of homes where the mailboxes are to the surrounding neighborhoods what Oz was to Kansas.

And apparently, such creative, colorful things can be a clue to the person living there.

Take the mailbox at the home of Ray Rose on Agate Street in Pasco. The mailbox is wooden and painted and looks like a basset hound, complete with a red tongue, four legs and a tail sticking up in the back.

"I just love dogs," said Rose, 75.

Go up to his front porch, and you'll see that the mailbox isn't the only expression of his affection for dogs. A sign by the door proclaims: "Cockers on duty." Ring the doorbell, and two enthusiastic spaniels named Tucker and Ashley appear in the window with some friendly barking.

He bought the basset hound mailbox for $10 about seven months ago from a street vendor who had a variety of them in his pickup.

"I brought it home and put it up there, and I've had a lot of people stop and look at it," Rose said.

In front of Ray Langaas's home on West 26th Avenue in Kennewick, a John Deere tractor receives the mail -- not that he played a role in selecting it.

"The kids got it for me," he said.

But it suits him nonetheless.

"I'm an old country boy, and we had John Deere tractors all the time when I was a kid growing up," said Langaas, 82, who grew up in Minnesota and North Dakota.

"Everything they get me is a John Deere item," he said, citing a pair of salt and pepper shakers as examples.

Langaas isn't the only Tri-Citian whose mailbox is an emblem of a rural upbringing.

A curbside post on Victoria Avenue in Kennewick supports four mailboxes on a rail, of which one is shaped like a barn. The mailbox was there when Calvin Aylsworth and his wife moved into the house a little more than a year ago.

"Actually, it's one of the smaller things that led us to buy the place in the first place," he said of the mailbox. That and the copper pig wind vane on the roof, he said.

"I've never seen a flying pig wind vane before, and it goes with the barn," said Aylsworth, 61, who grew up on a farm near Deer Park. He said he particularly likes having a barn for a mailbox because it's roomy enough to fit large packages inside.

"They don't have to come up to my door to deliver bigger packages," he said.

That's one benefit that can come with a custom-designed mailbox.

But a specialty box isn't all advantages. None of the people interviewed said a fancy mailbox gets them any special treatment from the postal carrier. In fact, Marvin and Margaret Smith, who live on Victoria Avenue near Aylsworth, said the postal carrier often misses when the flag is up because it doesn't stand out enough from the chimney on their mailbox shaped like a cottage.

And Dave and Mary Post, who live on Ruby Avenue in Pasco, have a mailbox shaped like a golf bag with clubs sticking out the end and straps hanging down. Their 7-year-old granddaughter gets a kick out of collecting the mail from it, but it doesn't do anything to improve the contents of the mail, they said.

"I call it the 'awful bill box,' " Dave Post said.

* Joe Chapman: 509-582-1512; jchapman@tricityherald.com

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Sunday, May. 31, 2009

Better boxes: Tri-Citians express themsevles with specialty mailboxes

By Joe Chapman, Herald staff writer