Our neighbor, Skip, took it upon himself to plow out our driveway at 5:30 am on the morning of our first snow accumulation this year.
It's a long story that starts with our neighborhood mailboxes being out on the side of a state highway across the road from our neighborhood. Because of the low population density, we have USPS Rural Route delivery, which means our neighborhood mail comes to a mailbox cluster rather than to our houses.
Checking the mailboxes across a narrow two-lane highway with cars whizzing by at a 50-mph speed limit wasn't exactly unsafe, but it wasn't exactly comfortable. In winter, there was the added challenge of crossing the road, shovel in hand, to clear the row of the snow the plows had pushed up. We didn't have any organized turn-taking for that task. Usually the first one of us to clear our own driveways, then went up to the main road to clear the boxes. Again, not exactly dangerous, and not exactly safe.
And to further lift the romantic veil off the rural life, having our mailboxes on the side of a public road away from proximity to a house made our mail vulnerable to theft. It wasn't constant, but over the course of a year, all of us would have something stolen from the box.
One day, my daughter's playmate, now a high-school student, had a "what if" revelation. Every day she passed the entrance to an old logging road into my woods. The now mostly overgrown path led off the dirt road that served our neighborhood. Janelle envisioned moving the mailboxes to that road entrance far enough in for a car to pull off the road for the box check.
Since it would occupy a small piece of land for which I had the tax-payer responsibility, Janelle asked if I would yield the parcel to the neighborhood. As it was for mutual benefit, I gave her an immediate yes. Now she had to get permission from the USPS. We all knew the delivery driver; the driver saw the benefit to having a safer place to fill the boxes; the controlling authorities for the driver's route were local as well. Permission was granted on behalf of the United States of America.
Another neighbor, Bob, provided the lumber and built the frame for the row of boxes. We each individually added our boxes. Because they're now in a quiet turn out, it's become a place to meet and share neighborliness. And we don't lose mail any more.
What's significant is how easily,"that's the way we've always done it," grooves us into tolerating things that don't have to be endured. Janelle's "what if' revelation and community organizing that reached from an idea, to a pitch to her friend's father, to an action by the federal government, is a model for all of us. That was twenty years ago.
Back to Skip.
Skip has a small front-end loader. At 5:30 am, he plows his driveway. When he's finished, he drives a few hundred yards down our road to plow out the mailboxes. Then he drives 50 yards and plows out my driveway as a small thank you for the mailbox location.
Thank you Janelle.
What are we tolerating? What if?
Can we imagine the scope and lasting impact of our "what ifs?"
Warm regards,
Francis Sopper