All that remained was a heap of twisted metal in the ditch alongside the road. The personal belongings—a damp “National Enquirer,” a tattered Lillian Vernon magazine and a rain-soaked telephone bill—had already been removed and placed in a plastic bag. There was an eerie calm along Route 6 in Fluvanna as Aunt Vera steadied herself against the maple tree at the end of her driveway and looked at the wreckage in her yard.

About this time, Aunt Vera’s daughter Fran pulled into the driveway, parked her car and got out. The January air was brisk. A slight breeze moved the broom straw that grew in the field beside the yard. The bird feeders in Aunt Vera’s dogwood tree swayed gracefully. Fran pulled her scarf tighter around her head and was a bit startled by the sight of her mother standing outside in her overcoat and fur lined boots.

“Mama,” Fran said.

“Yes,” Aunt Vera responded.

“What on earth are you doing standing out here in the cold?”

“I’m waiting to flash the next trucker that rolls by,” she said with a sarcastic, matter-of-fact tone.

“Don’t be fresh, Mama,” Fran stated as she stepped carefully over the frozen ground. “Where’s your hat? You’ll catch your death out here.”

“Funny hearin’ you say that. When you were little, you never listened to me. You always went outside without your hat on and look, here you are, still alive and kickin’. Maybe I was wrong all those years.”

“I was 12. I’m now 62 and you’re 84. Neither one of us has any business being out in this cold breeze. And you might slip and—.”  She caught herself as she looked down at the mangled object in the ditch that had earlier captured Aunt Vera’s attention. “Goodness.  What on earth happened here?”

“Hoodlums,” Aunt Vera said with distaste. “In one swift swing of a baseball bat, a bunch of hoodlums have turned my mailbox into a scrap iron. Nothin’ but twisted metal and my poor little faded red flag is all curled up like holiday ribbon.”

“Mama, when did this happen?”

“I remember hearing a big crash in the middle of the night. I just thought it was a part of my dream.” She smiled. “I was dreamin’ Sean Connery and I were—”
“Mother!”

“Whatever. Now what are we gonna do about this mess here?”

“Well, I’m taking you to get groceries right now. We could swing by the hardware store and take a look at a new one.”

“I don’t want a new one. I want my old one.”

“Get in the car,” Fran insisted. “We’re going to E.W. Thomas’ for groceries and then we’re going to look for a new mailbox.” They moved toward the car. “What’s in the plastic bag?”

“My mail,” Aunt Vera answered. “It’s all messed up. My “National Enquirer” is soaked from cover to cover. I’ll have to buy a new one to read about Oprah Winfrey being abducted by aliens. The Lillian Vernon is a lost cause. And I’ll have to hang my electric bill by the wood stove to dry out.”

Later that day, Aunt Vera didn’t like a thing she saw at the hardware store. She said that modern mailboxes were hideous with all their new fangledness.

“If I’ve got to get a new one,” Aunt Vera said.  “I’m gonna get a good, sturdy, simple one.”

She didn’t like the fiberglass one with the deer scene on it.

“I’ve got enough deer in my garden. I don’t want them on my mailbox.”

She didn’t care for the wooden one.

“A couple of hard rains and that piddly o’ thing is gonna fall apart.”

She hated those new bulky plastic ones with the wide base and the huge top.

“Good gravy,” she complained. “I don’t know if you’re supposed to put your mail in that big ol’ thing or pull up to it and order a burger and fries.”

Finally, after a long search, Aunt Vera settled on a nice, simple mailbox with a baked on black enamel coating, a bright red flag on the side and a pressure treated post on which to perch it. She also picked up some new shiny stick-on numbers and enough letters to spell her name.

On their way back to Aunt Vera’s house, Fran noticed that Aunt Vera was wiping a tear from her eye with the tissue she always keeps tucked in the sleeve of her coat.

“Mama,” Fran asked. “What the matter?”

“Nothin’,” Aunt Vera replied. “I’m just a silly ol’ woman with silly ol’ notions.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I know it was nothin’ more than a mailbox, but your daddy put that in the ground nearly half a century ago. A lot of communicatin’ has come in and gone out of that box during my lifetime. High school graduation notices, weddin’ invitations, birth announcements, Christmas cards.  Detergent samples and sweepstakes entry forms. And all those “Progressive Farmer” magazines. That simple, yet sturdy little metal box with the faded red flag has brought me so much joy. And now some stupid, good-for-nothin’ hoodlums decided to destroy a silly ol’ woman’s mailbox with one swing of a baseball bat. Not only did they destroy something precious to me, but they disrespected America’s greatest game. If they were still alive, I’m sure both your daddy and Mr. Damagio would have a few choice words to say about all this.”

The post office is going to hold Aunt Vera’s mail for a while until the ground thaws and we can dig a hole and put up her new mailbox. Until then, if you’ve got a baseball bat in your possession that you use to destroy people’s property instead of hitting home runs, I wouldn’t brag about it. Aunt Vera doesn’t stand for too much nonsense. She might be 84, but she still has passionate dreams about Sean Connery and uses her National Rifle Association membership card as a bookmark in her Bible. She’s especially upset that you soaked her Lillian Vernon catalogue because she was planning on ordering one of those expandable exercise bars you put inside the top of a doorjamb so she could add pull-ups to her daily workout.

In other words, the next time you take a swing at my aunt’s mailbox, she just might swing back.