sketchbook stories: the yellow mailbox

you've got mail!

Once, there was a yellow mailbox at the end of the driveway. It matched our front door and awnings.

In those days of stamps and typewriters, when the post office was the social network, the yellow mailbox housed fan mail for my mother’s newsletter and airmail letters from my British penpal. And sometimes, foil-wrapped slices of blueberry cake from a neighbor.

The mailbox, uprooted last winter by an overzealous snowplow, is black now and filled with hospital bills from my father’s last month of life. And, like my little family, the island’s three post offices are now reduced to one.

Sketch by my grandfather, whose illustrations graced the pages of more than 150 books, including those by Hemingway and Faulkner.