What your SC mailbox says about you

Now you may wonder why I would write about mailboxes. Pretty benign stuff in the grand scheme of things, right?

Well, not if you live in my persnickety suburban neighborhood where every mailbox looks alike and where the Mailbox Mafia has issued some stern letters to unsuspecting residents, including photographs, of their mailboxes which are said to be all sorts of things – not up to code, in need of repair, ready for the wrecking ball, ruining the neighborhood, affecting unsettling eyesores, and perhaps a reason the world seems so out of whack.

And I bet you’re thinking I have such a mailbox.

RELATED: Reader-submitted photos of their ‘unusual’ mailboxes

Nope. Save for some bird poop that has the adhesive properties of super glue, mine is in fine fiddle. So while several neighbors have been busy sanding, painting and taking care of gold numbers before the M.M. gets really serious and leaves some bloodied junk mail in their beds, I got to thinking.

Specifically, I got to thinking about a particular mailbox I often pass by on my way to a friend’s farm in St. Matthews.

This mailbox is a jewel; it would send the M.M. into a full-blown frenzy.

It has a big metal trashcan on the ground which is marked “JUNK MAIL.” Just above it, is a regular mailbox attached to an old hand plow, and way above that, attached to a tall pole, is another mailbox marked “BILLS.”

It makes me chuckle. Somebody has a great sense of humor, not to mention a dose of creativity.

His name is Captain Dave. He has a last name – Connell – but he told me “nobody messes with it.”

So Captain Dave grew up on the South Carolina coast. For a long time, he was a licensed boat captain and then, he said, “I gave up the ocean life and fish for dirt and horses.”

These days, Captain Dave lives in Sandy Run, raises horses, and runs a towing company. “We drive all over South Carolina picking up cars for insurance companies, towing cars. I travel all over the backroads. There’s not a small town I haven’t been through in this state.”

And there’s plenty of entertaining mailboxes he’s seen along the way, like the one near Hilton Head Island that had a mailbox on a long pole and was marked “AIR MAIL.” Captain Dave determined that the man who made the mailbox was a pilot.

“I thought that was pretty cool, but I decided I wasn’t going to put ‘AIR MAIL’ on mine. I wanted to put ‘BILLS’ on mine. When I got it done, I told the mail lady if she could put bills in it, I’d pay ‘em. She just started laughing and said, ‘Well, I reckon your bills ain’t gonna get paid ‘cause I can’t get ‘em up there.’ ”

Captain Dave said he’s had “a lot of compliments” on his mailbox.

“People ride by and look at what I’ve done. They know it’s Captain Dave’s house. It’s like an icon, you know?”

Actually, Captain Dave, it’s like folk art.

I got so interested in the subject of funky mailboxes that I talked with Dr. Laura Green, the Folklife and Traditional Arts program director at the University of South Carolina’s McKissick Museum in Columbia.

“The urge to spruce up a mailbox is a response, in part, to the very situation you describe in your own neighborhood, a way of breaking out of the (mail)box and not having every mailbox look the same,” Green said.

“People are personalizing their living environment, letting the world know, ‘This is who I am.’ I think of this as akin to yard art. I would say that yard art and customized mailboxes are a type of folk art for a number of reasons.

“I often think of folk art as ‘the art of everyday life.’ Often, this type of art is so woven into our lives that we don’t necessarily see the things we do and make as Art with a capital ‘A.’ Folk art is deeply rooted in our identity, in the various folk groups to which we all belong, be they geographical, family, cultural, occupational or religious among others. Folk art is an artistic expression of this identity. So, often people refer to their occupation through these decorated mailboxes. A farmer might have a miniature John Deere tractor mailbox, for example … Communication is a hallmark of folk art … Folk art mailboxes, like any form of folk art, could be considered a ‘language’ of sorts.”

Green added, “Creating such a mailbox takes specialized skills, creativity and imagination. Those who use welding in their occupations – auto mechanics, farmers, ranchers, among others – can channel their professional expertise into making something for fun, in addition to the day-to-day requirements of their work. We refer to ‘occupational folklife’ as the skills and knowledge unique to our work, so mailboxes that draw upon our work in this playful way are an example of occupational folklife … People who create these mailboxes are thinking outside the ‘box,’ stretching the limits of their creativity, imagination and resourcefulness.”

Well there you go. Just when I was thinking funky mailboxes might be a benign subject, we have occupational folklife and people personalizing their living environments.

Thank you, Dr. Green!

And take that you miserable old Mailbox Mafia!

This story was originally published August 6, 2016 at 9:00 AM with the headline "What your SC mailbox says about you."