Mailbox Bashing - is this a thing?

[Nick]

Never did it before in high school, never knew it was a thing. A couple weeks ago i came home and my mailbox was on the ground with a huge dent in the side. I figured it fell over or something from a wind gust. Now i"m guessing it was just "those darned kids".

Not sure i get the appeal of bashing in mailboxes. I caused quite a lot of mischief in high school but never property damage.

 

[ctenidae]

Never did it. We had much more fun throwing toilets out of the back of a truck at 60 mph, or dragging a shopping cart on the highway (usually, but not always, without a rider). Tossing bottles out of car windows at signs was always fun (as were eggs, milk cartons, over ripe fruits, and anything else handy).

Closest to real property damage we got was spraying a Roundup penis in a teacher's yard.

 

[Puck it]

It is called mailbox baseball. It is from a movie but can't remember title.

 

[o3jeff]

Never did it. We had much more fun throwing toilets out of the back of a truck at 60 mph, or dragging a shopping cart on the highway (usually, but not always, without a rider). Tossing bottles out of car windows at signs was always fun (as were eggs, milk cartons, over ripe fruits, and anything else handy).

Did you grow up in Southington and did we hang around? Instead of a truck we used a station wagon to to push stuff out of the back!

 

[wa-loaf]

Kids have been hitting mailboxes with bats as long as there have been cars and bats.

I don't think we ever threw anything out of a moving vehicle, but we did put a few dents in cars with bb guns. Also set the lawn of the president of Colby College on fire with some flares one Halloween.

 

[deadheadskier]

Never played mailbox baseball, but me and my friends were pretty prolific pumpkin smashers in middle school.

 

[wa-loaf]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mailbox_baseball

 

[gmcunni]

fairly regular event in our town on certain streets. so much so that it is comical to see the defensive strategies employed by some homeowners.

 

[jaytrem]

fairly regular event in our town on certain streets. so much so that it is comical to see the defensive strategies employed by some homeowners.

Yeah, the cement filled decoy is known to work well.

 

[gmcunni]

Yeah, the cement filled decoy is known to work well.

yes.

i also chuckle to see a 2'x4' sheet of plywood leaning up against the maibox in a weak attempt to create a shield.

my favorite in town is the guy who built a mailbox on a seesaw. the counter weight puts the mailbox up in the air about 8 feet with a rope for the mailman to pull down to deposit the mail.

 

[ctenidae]

my favorite in town is the guy who built a mailbox on a seesaw. the counter weight puts the mailbox up in the air about 8 feet with a rope for the mailman to pull down to deposit the mail.

I'd put it on a swivel, like a jousting dummy.
Or tied to a shotgun.

 

[jlboyell]

all the back roads around the farms were always littered with broken and taped together mailboxes in delaware. we dropped a 4 cylinder ford motor off a tailgate at 60... it is so dumb, but i am laughing at it now, even though if i had to clean up a damn motor id be pissed. kids are stupid.

 

[darent]

every time the movie Stand BY Me runs ,a rash of mail box bashing takes place, I used the cement filled mailbox trick and the covered over hole in front of the mailbox. someone left the lower A-arm of their front end one time.

 

[billski]

There are a number of serious vandal-proof boxes out there. Our neighbor has one. It's solid steel, welded plates on a steel post set in concrete. Anyone who hits that is going to sustain some serious damage to his/herself. Take this testimonial:

[FONT=Trebuchet MS,Tahoma,Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-serif]“A county ambulance was making an emergency run down our road at about 55 or 60 mph, and the driver somehow got off the pavement on the right, clipping the front of our mailbox. The ambulance lost both sets of rear-view mirrors on the right side, and then the the box-body of the ambulance hit the mailbox. At some point not too long thereafter, the horizontal 4x6 the mailbox was bolted to sheared off, and the box landed about 10 yards down the road from its base. Our home is about 1/4 mile from the mailbox, and we heard the impact as we were sitting in the living room. [/FONT]
[FONT=Trebuchet MS,Tahoma,Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-serif]“I went down to the road and looked at the damage, then picked up the mailbox and brought it back to the house. It was severely dented at the door end, to the point where the door wouldn't close properly. But after bashing on the box for about 30 minutes with a 16-ounce ball peen hammer, I was able to get it to work well enough to stick it back up on its post again Friday morning. We didn't miss a single mail delivery. And Friday afternoon I got a call from the director of the ambulance service admitting that his driver was at fault, and that they wanted to replace my mailbox. He also admitted that the mailbox did $8,000 to $10,000 worth of damage to the ambulance, and that the ambulance is going to have to go back to the factory to have the box-body repaired. Fortunately for my pocketbook, the Sheriff's deputy who did the accident report indicated that the ambulance had to have had its right tires entirely off the paved surface of the road in order to have hit the mailbox in the first place, so the responsibility for the accident lies entirely with the ambulance driver, and my mailbox was simply an innocent victim.
[/FONT]
[FONT=Trebuchet MS,Tahoma,Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-serif]
[/FONT]
[FONT=Trebuchet MS,Tahoma,Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-serif]“This whole incident says a whole lot for the durability of these mailboxes. I'm going to try to send the company some pictures one of these days.” [/FONT]
[FONT=Trebuchet MS,Tahoma,Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-serif]Gregg K. -- Tennessee[/FONT]

Source

 

[snoseek]

My only dumb game as a teen I participated in was driving around and looking for balloons for parties at peoples houses and collecting. I got a black one once that I assume was for a funeral/mercy meal. Score!

 

[jrmagic]

Yeah, the cement filled decoy is known to work well.

Not a mailbox but we had a neigbor who would put his garbage pail into the street on collection day and some guy would always come by and smash it with his car. One day the neighbor filled it up with rocks and cinder blocks. It was the last time his garbage pail got hit lol.