History Of Muirhead P.O. Boxes

     I must be desperate for material to post a blog entry on post office boxes. Actually, my insurance agent got me to thinking about it this past week, when he was confused as to whether I'm at P.O. Box 3 or 401.
     Before I go any further, it's important to note there are different sizes of post office boxes. At the Oakland post office, they have three sizes: 1, 2, and 3. One is the smallest. At the larger city post offices, I believe the box sizes go up at a humungous size 6.
     My family for years had post office box 817, a size 2 box, at the old post office on Locust street. Then, around 1976, my family moved to Winchester Bay for half a year and closed out box 817. When we moved back to Oakland, for a few weeks we had a size 1 box (606, 616, or 626?). We then switched over to box 636, a size 2 box, at the old post office.
     The new Oakland post office opened around 1991, and that's when things really began to get complicated. The new post office had more boxes, but the numbers didn't go as high. Box 740 is the highest box number at the new post office. I believe the old post office went into the 900 range. I asked George, a former Oakland postmaster about this one time.
     He told me to look at the boxes. Some numbers were missing. In other words, there aren't actually 740 boxes at the new facility, because some numbers are skipped. The same was apparently true at the old post office, although I had never paid attention before to the discrepancy.
     When box 636 transferred, it became a size 1 box, due to the configurations of boxes at the new post office. 636 remained our box number for over a decade. Then, I ran for Douglas County commissioner in 2002, and I rented a new box number for my campaign. I asked the postmaster at the time which boxes were available. Numerous boxes ending in "5" were available for rent. The lowest number was 3. I liked 3 for several reasons. It was higher up than the other boxes, and therefore easier for me to see into the box; it was a single-digit number, which would make it "stick out" as a mailing address; and more importantly, it was a size 2 box.
     After my campaign was over, my Mother gave me permission to close out our 636 box, and transfer to box 3. This may not seem like a big deal, but when a person has newspapers and magazines with torn pages, because they're crammed into a dinky size 1 box, having a larger size 2 box suddenly makes the world a whole light brighter!
     Box 3 has been our box ever since, UNTIL I discovered that our family was eligible for a free post office box, because we live in town. A free box definitely sounded better than paying $54.00(?) a year for a rented box. Unfortunately, the free rate only applied to size 1 boxes. Box 3, a size 2 box, would have to go. That's when I rented box 401 (I liked it because it was on the top row and easy for me to reach) and began to transfer mail to the new box number.
     Unfortunately, I had forgotten why I enjoyed box 3 in the first place: its larger size. When mail began arriving in box 401, I began to see once again the torn pages on mail that was too big to stuff into the tiny box. At some point, we kept our magazine subscriptions and newspapers directed to box 3, and made 401 our "business" mailbox for bills, etc.
     I'm sure at some point, we'll close out one of the boxes and use only one for our mailing address. But which one? Due to financial cutbacks, we don't receive as many magazines and catalogs as we once did, so the need for larger box 3 has somewhat diminished. Still, there's a certain charm with having box 3. I've had numerous people exclaim, "Wow, how'd you get a box like that? You must have been one of the first people in town to rent a box." No, I simply was at the "right place at the right time" when it came time for me to rent a box.
     So where is this blog entry going? The Oakland post office, which does not have residential mail delivery in town (which is why everyone rents post office boxes) has recently begun delivering mail to homes on Cypress Street. Due to my cancer treatments, I don't have the physical stamina to install a mailbox post in the ground. It would be nice to have mail delivered across the street and not have to pay for a post office box anymore. But until I recover from my cancer, I'll have to be content getting my daily exercise, walking three blocks to the post office to collect the mail from boxes 3 and 401.