The Vandals Took the Handles … surburban terrorism rolls on

The terrorism descriptor might be a bit strong, but that sure is the way it feels.
Our first experience with this American phenomenon was back in the early ‘90’s when I had two kids in high school and one in elementary.

Our mail is delivered to the curbside mailbox (you know where this is going, don’t you?). Put the red flag up and the mailperson stops to take the outgoing letters and deposits all the bills, magazines, and circulars that an 18” x 6” box can handle. My wife would paint the aluminum box with a color that matched our house. Then she would stencil the house number and colorful seasonal decorations on both sides of it. In between holiday seasons the silhouette of a Model T Ford would appear on the mailbox (our name is Carr…get it?). This worked well until the day we noticed that one side of the box had been bashed in and the whole affair lifted almost clean off its perch on the projecting two by four that held the mailbox at regulation USPS height. This demonstration of community fraternity repeated itself at least three times over the years. The culminating showstopper took place one Sunday morning at around 5:00 am (big mistake, the sun was shining and I was awake in bed). I heard two people outside talking. Then there was a large crash as something smashed down on the pavement. This was followed, in rapid succession, by the sound of running feet and my jumping out of bed (not quite a jump) and moving quickly to the window. All I saw were the backs of two people moving up the street opposite us and our mailbox in the middle of the street. It had been physically lifted off its perch, no baseball bat involved! I was outside and in hot pursuit in less than 2 minutes (no shower that morning). I found the two gents approaching the front yard of the local teen bad boy in whose yard they had camped out the previous night. They refused to talk to me until I stood in front of them … talk or push. Denials followed and the police were of no help except to say “That kid comes from a family of troublemakers.” Things quieted down a bit after that. And I installed a bright new galvanized mailbox, forever the optimist.

Back in those days I was in the habit of parking my car in the road on occasion. Our road was quite wide and this was allowed by town regulation. Then I sent a letter to the editor of the local newspaper. It ran on Friday. On Saturday morning I rushed out at 7:00 am so I could make the weekly breakfast that all the local ham radio operators attended. Unfortunately my car, a green 1994 Ford Escort wagon, was in no condition to drive. Every window save two (passenger side) was smashed in. Window frames and roof also had dent marks. A friend drove me to breakfast that day. I was picking out glass fragments for years, right up until it happened the second time a couple years later. I guess I made somebody unhappy, twice.

Then there is the wooden deer incident. You know those deer that you cut out of plywood. One is looking up and the other is intent on some imaginary deer food on your front lawn. I built them from plans and then placed them on the lawn with a spotlight on them. I guess the spotlight must have illuminated little bubbles above the deer that read something like “We are bored! Please do something with us.” About once a week when we were returning home from work or some other necessity the deer would have migrated to better grazing grounds throughout the yard. Things really picked up one day when we returned to find one deer humping the other (my wife told me not to write that, but I couldn’t help it). After about the third humping incident it was actually quite funny. All the way home in the car we would speculate about whether or not the deer were humping today. That all stopped after a couple of years. I guess somebody either moved out of the neighborhood, got a girlfriend, or was arrested.

We finally moved to a new neighborhood some twenty miles away. The day before the big move I placed all the aluminum lawn furniture, the extension ladder, my Gap ham radio antenna (two pieces, one 16 ft. long and the other 10 ft.), and our grandson’s plastic slide right next to our front steps up against the house. That way they would be ready to go into the moving van. Upon our return home later that day we found that all was missing except the plastic Fisher Price slide set. Well, we were moving to the country where both population and crime were low, so we thought. It was time to move on.

We are at the new house now. The place is deserted. Cars pass by at a rate of at least one every 45 minutes on a heavy traffic day. Today we got up to go to church and found that the used Christmas tree, previously placed at the curb to await pickup, had walked some 30 feet to the center of our driveway. The mailbox was open and the red plastic insert was missing as was the holiday flag and mount that were suspended below it. This was pretty tame stuff compared to the last town we lived in. As we drove to church we noticed that all the other mailboxes on our side of the road were open and various decorations that the neighbors had put up were also gone. What do kids have to do on Saturday nights in a town of 8,000 anyway? Well, we arrived at church and at the end of the mass our pastor made an announcement. Our church is of the ethnic Polish variety (we are not Polish, but we love the parish and the pastor). It seems, he told us, that there is an old Slavic custom that each New Year the pastor visits each home and paints an inscription above each doorway while saying a prayer that will help protect the household for the coming year. Of course these days, he explained, it is impossible for the pastor to visit everyone. So, he offered us these little kits of white chalk or colored chalk (choose either the white or colored envelope) plus a handout with the inscription and prayer conveniently written out. Anybody who wanted the kit could approach the alter after the mass and take one. My wife was the first one up there. She took the colored kit. It looked like we might need it in the new neighborhood. Now you can tell which house is ours. The doorframe reads “20 + C + M + B + 11”, the initials of the three magi and the new year, 2011.

(PS – Being old hands at neighborhood terrorism, we cruised the far end of our street when we got home. The flag and mailbox insert were found along the side of the road in the snow. All good vandals know enough not to get caught with the goods.)

While I chalked the blessing my wife read "May all who come to our home this year rejoice to find Christ Living among us.."