Gettin' Back to the Box

It was a good idea.  But in truth, there wasn’t really an option.

What with all the touring I do, rolling around out there, carrying music from state to state, I can’t keep an eye on everything.  And I certainly can’t plan on checking my mail every day at home.

 I’ve got a piddling little mailbox at the house.  After only a couple of days, bills and junk mail are screaming to get out, trapped in between half-price coupons for Arby’s sandwiches, local newspapers that are already outdated, and offers for yet another credit card with a ridiculously low interest rate for the first two weeks before it jumps up to a 43% annual rate.

“No, I don’t need a different cell phone plan.  No, your life insurance policy is not interesting to me.  No…they haven’t lived here in years.”

So I got a real post office box.  Down at the post office.  A big one.  Makes sense.  If I’m gone for a week, correspondence can be tossed safely in a crate until my return.  Bob or Fred or Ralph won’t have to figure out what to push against in order to gain more leverage because, “dang it, I don’t care how full this box is…this magazine is going IN THERE!”

But sometimes, I’m gone for longer.  The stacks get bigger.  Last month’s magazines are still in the bottom of the white corrugated two-handled crate bearing the words “United States Postal Service” across its chest, awaiting my return…and the new issues are arriving.

More statements, more bills, more letters, more stuff continues to accumulate in my absence.  My list of “things to do” is building at the incremental cost of a postage stamp…and I’m not even home yet.

And when I do get in from the road, the post office is the first stop.  And of course, it has to be during “office hours,” since they’ve been holding it for me.  So I swing through to get the box, carry it home, and begin to live the illusion of “getting a handle on things now that I’m home for a while.”

Woah…this is heavy.  I think I just hurt my back.