Destroyed Mailboxes: Foul Play Or Plow Damage?

Brooklyn-based artist Eleanor Alper gets out to her North Sea studio—nestled in the woods on the corner of Noyac Road and Whalebone Landing Road—every so often during the winter for special occasions.

What should have been an exciting visit last week quickly turned into a somber one. While the artist was waiting for a shipment of paintings from Italy, she stumbled across a rude surprise on the edge of her property facing Noyac Road: what was left of her heavy-duty green mailbox.

Hanging on by just one side, the base was ripped open and cracked up the front, causing the mailbox to tip over backward into an overgrown planter on the ground.

“It’s a big, huge, plastic mailbox, almost like a pillar,” Ms. Alper said during a telephone interview on Thursday. “I was shocked at the damage. It seems to be done by a great deal of violence by a truck. It’s hard to break that kind of thing, especially like that.”

Ms. Alper’s mailbox is not the only casualty of late. Since the end of January, more than a dozen mailboxes along Noyac Road in North Sea and Sag Harbor have suffered similar fates. Dented, cracked and downright mowed-over mailboxes have lined the road until, recently, homeowners began putting the pieces back together while guessing at who or what could be the culprit behind the mailbox massacre.

The Southampton Town Police Department has no leads, according to Sergeant Walter Britton. In December, a report came in about three destroyed mailboxes along Noyac Road, he said, as well as another on four damaged mailboxes just a couple of weeks ago.

“We have zero prospects or information, no witnesses,” he said during a telephone interview last week. “We’re having a really hard time with this. It appears someone with a truck is just driving right over the top of them, almost like a kid thing.”

The young prankster theory didn’t come as a surprise to Noyac Road homeowner Frank Bosco, whose mailbox is bungee-corded onto its post.

“That’s common out here, it’s nothing new. You see it every once in a while, a kid putting a bat to them ...” he paused during a recent interview at his home, making a swinging motion with his arms, followed by a cracking noise. “You know, kid stuff. Some things don’t change. I did it when I was young, too.” He went on to say that out here, knocking over a mailbox is the equivalent of cow tipping.

But Mr. Bosco maintained that the damage done to his mailbox is thanks to last year’s record snowfalls, which stirred up frustration among local residents toward Southampton Town employees. Some even threw snowballs and cursed at Highway Department workers, angry that town plows had pushed snow back into their driveways and damaged their mailboxes.

“The snow just ripped them all down. They hit them with the plows,” Mr. Bosco said. “This is my first time back out here; we rented for the season. The tenants didn’t tell me anything, so I just made a quick fix so the mail lady could do her thing.”

The Sag Harbor Post Office’s six mail carriers, who also service the North Sea area, have not reported any difficulties delivering mail along Noyac Road, according to Connie Chirichello, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Postal Service New York region.

“But if something happens to the mailbox, the carrier would bring the mail back to the office and the post office would hold it for 10 days in the hopes that the resident would contact the post office to find out where their mail is,” Ms. Chirichello said, though upon inspection, half of the downed mailboxes held stacks of letters, regardless.

Or some postal carriers might deliver letters right to the front stoop, as Noyac Road resident Mary McMahon’s mail carrier did for several weeks after her mailbox was knocked off its post during the January storm, Ms. McMahon reported.

“I’m an old woman, I’m 81,” Ms. McMahon said during a telephone interview earlier this month. “And I didn’t need to have this aggravation.”

But the box was mysteriously fixed just two weeks ago, she said.

“Until yesterday afternoon, it was standing upright next to the post,” Ms. McMahon said. “I didn’t know what happened until my mail carrier told me that she had completed her deliveries and on her way back—the plow was going east, she was going west—she saw the plow go by and the mailbox flying. I mean, you know, you try to keep things nice, but by God.”

Another Noyac Road resident, who asked to remain anonymous, also blames the snowplows for repeated mailbox damage. The most recent storm earlier this year was the fifth time the resident’s mailbox has been knocked down over a 10-year span, according to the homeowner.

“We’ve seen the plows hit it at least once,” she said. “You can see from the marks in the snow. They go at an alarmingly fast rate. We always say, ‘Oh no, not again.’ We fix it with these 5-inch nails. You would think they really hold. Nothing holds against the snowplows because they’re quite strong.

“It would be nice if they would be more careful of the mailboxes,” the homeowner continued. “Everybody’s mail is quite important to them and you don’t want it all covered with snow and slush. You have to put the mailbox in a certain spot, within easy reach so the mail deliverer doesn’t have to get out of his vehicle. Therefore, you can’t move it out of the way.”

Inevitably, most mailboxes are situated along Southampton Town’s right of way, according to Highway Department Superintendent Alex Gregor. He reported that the right of way is about 60 feet across on Noyac Road and encompasses not only the paved street, but the grassy areas on either side. During a telephone interview last week, Mr. Gregor admitted that last year, the plowing process was responsible for some of the mailbox damage, but the likelihood that it is to blame this time around is slim, he said, because there has been so little snow.

“Really, the men don’t want to damage anyone’s property, especially the town’s truck, but what happens is the snow does get thrown off the end of the plow,” Mr. Gregor explained. “If it’s wet and heavy, it does have some force and, unfortunately, some mailboxes succumb to being knocked down. But they’re not hit by a vehicle.”

If a mailbox incurs damage, due to a snowplow slipping off the road or a similar accident, the highway department is responsible for fixing the mailbox, Mr. Gregor added. Other than that, homeowners must repair their own property, he said.

Despite the 7 inches of snow seen in some areas during the January storm, local police said that, while snowplow damage is entirely possible, it’s probably not behind the recent rash of mailbox damage along Noyac Road.

“With these we’re seeing tire tracks, and those make us believe that someone ran off the road and ran them down,” Sgt. Britton said. “Remember, we didn’t have that much snow where we couldn’t tell the difference between a plow and the boxes being deliberately knocked down. We don’t believe it was a snowplow.”

Police haven’t discovered any connection or patterns between the downed mailboxes. It appears to be a prank, Sgt. Britton explained, and is usually charged as criminal mischief, a misdemeanor, punishable by restitution to the owner.

“We have had this problem in the past. It’s usually a person in a truck that sometimes goes down the road, yanks the wheel to the side and takes them out,” Sgt. Britton said. “Somehow it’s entertaining, I guess.”

Though some might blame the version of “mailbox baseball,” sans bat, on youthful pranksters, a few Pierson High School students say they aren’t in on the joke.

“I haven’t heard anything about who is behind it, and neither have my friends,” Pierson High School senior Harley Decker recently wrote in a Facebook message reply to inquiries made by The Press.

“I haven’t heard a thing,” Pierson High School 2009 graduate Katie Osiecki also wrote.

The Noyac Road resident who asked not to be named was quick to defend the local students.

“We’ve never had kids vandalize our mailbox,” she said. “As a matter of fact, we don’t even see kids here. The area we live in is pretty much summer people and weekenders. And they’re all old, like we are. We never see a child. We have lived here 12 or 13 years, and we have never even seen a trick-or-treater.”