Millville man puts up ‘Air Mail’ box

When David Penn moved three mailboxes a few feet away from McCracken Pike, he added a fourth, that, one month later, still hasn’t received a single letter.

Then again, he didn’t really expect the U.S. Postal Service to deliver to a box 20 feet off the ground.

“I decided to ask the mailman about moving the three mail boxes down – my two neighbors’ and mine – and he said he didn’t have a problem with it, so then I came up with this idea of putting a tall pole in there and an ‘Air Mail’ sign, just for playing around,” said Penn. “I could have put ‘Drone Mail,’ on it, I guess but I didn’t.”

Penn, who’s lived in the area since he was a toddler, said he first got permission from his neighbors to move their boxes away from the road and closer to the Millville Road Bridge. Then he attached their boxes and his to a post near the bottom of a large wooden pole, with a fourth near the top, then sank the pole in the ground.

“The mailman would be sitting there and traffic would be coming right in that curve, so when they put the bridge in, I thought, ‘Well, heck, I can move that right there. They’ve got a little place to pull off – make it handier for them.”

Even if the carrier hasn’t delivered Penn’s air mail, Penn’s installation has been noticed. “I’ve had bunches of people ask me, ‘Who done it?’ then I finally tell them I did …” he said. “I just did it out of a joke, just goofing off,” said Penn.

All jokes aside, Penn said the move has had a practical, positive effect. The mail carrier and customers appreciate the regular-height boxes being moved out of a curve near the bridge, and the boxes are less of a target for vandals with ball bats.

“(Last) Wednesday afternoon, I walked up as he was putting the mail in and asked him about it and he said, ‘Yeah, I love it. It gets me out of the road.’ And he looked up at that right there – that’s all he did, was just look up at it,” said Penn, laughing.

Asked how he‘d retrieve a letter or package should someone else with a sense of humor deliver one via ‘Air Mail’, Penn thought for a moment and said, “I don’t know. Ladder, I guess.”