#979 Exterior Personality

When I walk around my neighborhood, I’m amazed by the variety of personalities expressed by the resident’s exterior displays.
Take flags for instance. Not the American flag, although there are plenty of those expressing the feeling of patriotism, I’m talking the feel-good flags flying above the doors and sticking from the front of the porches.
Flags with seasonal designs on them, happy snowmen or perky spring butterflies, and of course the flags emblazoned with the name and logo of the Fighting Somethings. Like a permanent pep rally. Huskies, Cougars, Beavers, and Trojans! Team spirit and rah rah rah!
Go Mariners! On Seahawks! Fight with all your might to get out of the basement.
I’d say “Go Sonics” too but it looks like they finally went.
The Flags are nice. You can often find out what college your neighbor went to without ever meeting them. And before they get ratty and faded they often perk up a place.
Lately there’s been another exterior design personality expresser. The mailbox. Mine is boring old-fashioned ordinary post office black. It would have been the even cheaper plain gray unpainted metal but they were out that day.
Some of my neighbors have the elaborately painted mailboxes. Their name ornately rendered in script, like those squiggly word identification tests on secure websites. And then there’s a background painting telling us a little about the owner.
One guy has a bunch of golf balls painted on his. One resident has a picture of a whale. Or it must have been the previous one. The new residents repainted the house rust, brown, and ocher. It doesn’t go with the ocean blue and grey whale painted mailbox at all.
My favorite mailboxes are the big plastic ones that have a rear door as well as a front one. This so the owner of the mailbox can reach into the back of it to extract his or her mail. Mailboxes being all of 22 inches long or so, it’s so much trouble going all the way around to the front.
I’m not sure what this tells me about the owner.
But I’m betting their interior décor has more than one Barcolounger.
America, ya gotta love it.