written and Illustrated By Mitchell Grant Hawley
May 10, 2025.
Sawyer stood loitering at the hostess desk at the Dixie Pig B-B-Q, peering past the cashier’s light-blonde perm wig towards the wood paneled wall behind her. The corner wall was cluttered with photos, trophies, and colorful, worn-out knick-knacks steeped in the passage of time. Sawyer stood entranced at the assortment of personal and cultural recollections on display. It was the summer 1995, and the restaurant had been open since the 30s. Nothing in the interior or exterior seemed to have changed. It was a time capsule. Sawyer loved video games, and especially the newest Encarta 95 Encyclopedia CD-ROM he just got for his IBM computer at home, but he was equally fascinated by the strange artifacts left behind by earlier generations found everywhere outside the house. There were so many eras, Sawyer mused, so many generations stacked behind his own life. It reminded him of the jukebox in the lobby. All the newest albums were displayed up front, while older albums lay stacked behind, like forgotten stories. Some eras felt close by, like his grandparents' time, just a few songs back. Others, like Egypt and Mesopotamia, were so ancient he couldn’t begin to wrap his brain around it.
While he mused looking at the cluttered corner of nostalgia, he remembered something his grandma once said humorously, a phrase that stuck in his memory like road sign: “Once, the authors of the world chose giant lizards and dinosaurs to rule the Earth. Now, the narrative belongs to humans and animals.” One photo caught his eye, showing a mailbox with a funny face and a mustache. “What’s the story with the funny mailbox?” he asked the hostess. She stared at him for a moment, caught between helping guests check-out and her unexpected role as a museum curator. He pointed at the picture again, eye-brows raised, repeating the question with his gaze. “Oh that, she laughed. I almost forgot about that”.
Outside, thunder cracked overhead as a summer storm rolled in, sending people rushing in to avoid the heavy downpour. The smell of rain and BBQ Pork mixed with the clamor of excitement as folks gathered together to dry off. The BBQ joint sat along a winding country highway, nestled deep in the Appalachian mountains. Sawyer lived nearby, and stopped in every once in a while during summer break on his bike, usually with plenty of time to spare. Compared to the rural geography, the place felt like being inside a postcard in the center of the world.
The hostess leaned forward on the counter, eyes scanning the room as if to make sure no one else was listening closely. “That’s the yodeling mailbox”, she said. Her eyes lit up as she began to unearth the forgotten story. “If I remember right, that funny mailbox came from Switzerland, and it’s as old as the civil war. Legend tells it was built by a family of clocksmiths. It was the first ever mechanical flying mailbox, equipped with a fleshy human face on the door. It flew into town one spring, with the migration of birds, and settled on old man Gus’ property. Old Gus swore it yodeled the prettiest tune as soon as a piece of mail was dropped in. That’s why he decided to put up with the weird thing.” She paused and began polishing glasses that were brought out by the dishwasher, and continued. “First day it arrived, Gus and the mailman stood there, scratching their chins, just baffled. The darn thing spoke to them in German!” The mailbox was beat to hell from all the travel, but Old Gus nursed it right up, and had it looking brand new and healthy again. Sawyer leaned in, elbow on the counter, mouth slightly open with awe as this absurd tale unfolded. “He didn’t mind much. His wife had passed years earlier, and he enjoyed the company, even if it spoke German.
"One day, Gus said he opened the mail box door, stuck his head in, and heard the voice of Abraham Lincoln himself reciting the Gettysburg Address! The neighbors all recalled him with his head in the mailbox for 2 whole minutes, listening, not moving an inch. The kids rode by on their bikes and joked he died standing up, death by mailbox asphyxiation. But that’s not even the strangest part,” she said while finishing the first polish of glasses. She turned away to help a family find a table, leaving Sawyer suspended in silence. Sawyer walked over to the jukebox, wondering if they had any yodeling songs. The heavy rain outside continued, while lightning flashed in the distant hills. She returned a few minutes later, walking slowly and wiping down menus while whistling the melody of Fred Astaire’s version of cheek-to-cheek. Sawyer gave up his yodel search in the jukebox, turned back again to the counter, prompting the woman with the remaining bit of the story.
“One Halloween", she began, as she rolled silverware into napkins, "old Gus saw a neighbor kid crawl inside the mailbox and shut the door behind him. The mail flag split in two and morphed into wings, bat wings, she exclaimed, and would you believe it, it flew off into the autumn twilight, flanked by a faint crescent moon, following a flock of birds into the horizon, just like it came into town. Gus was standing in his yard, dumbstruck yet again, holding a freshly carved jack-lantern when it happened.” She folded the last roll of silverware and arranged the stack neatly beside her. "The missing kid’s family was devastated, but he was always running off into the woods anyway. Folks around town say he turned up in New Orleans for Mardi Gras the following March, joined a traveling Zydeco band and disappeared into history.” The hostess straightened up, smiling and nodding at a couple waiting to be seated. “That was 60 years ago. About as old as I am” she said, vanishing into the crowd of the restaurant. Sawyer remained at the counter, gazing up at the photo of the mailbox. The surrounding photos and newspaper clippings seemed to orbit each other randomly, without any clear chronology, but each one equally fascinating.
The rain eventually let up. The heavy clouds broke apart, revealing the warmth and brightness of the sun pouring over the Appalachian Valley. He left the Dixie Pig B-B-Q with a quiet sense of reverence, although he didn’t know what to call it then. He was partially excited and fearful to stick his head in the mailbox when he got home, to see if by chance a voice from the past might be waiting in the dark hollow recesses.
The end.
Reflection:
Gus has a strong ability to form associative meaning between history and his own personal experiences. He’s part of the millennial cusp generation. He’s living first hand witness to a shifting chronology, where the analog past is giving way to the hyper connected future. His grandmother offers a counterpoint to his reflections on history. When Gus likens time to a jukebox, with eras stacked like songs from the present to the past, she disrupts his easily understood metaphor, and in so doing also enriches it. She presents two radically different accounts of the world’s story, one beginning with dinosaurs and the other with humans and animals. She suggests that meaning doesn’t have to follow a clear, linear path. Instead, it can emerge organically and without an easily understood resolution.
The mailbox is a symbol of the practical and uncanny. It evokes history and the voices from the past. Gus is bewildered by the abyss of time separating him from ancient civilizations like Mesopotamia and Egypt. The mailbox comes from this same chasm of time. Long before the Romans, the Persian Empire developed the postal system as we know it today. In this way, the mailbox is not just a container for bills and postcards, it’s a living artifact of continuity. An everyday technology of communication that connects people across distance, eras, and even dimensions of understanding.