About the time The Moorings was near build-out and Park Shore was getting underway, it became a fad, among high school morons, to engage in mailbox bashing. The damage was inflicted by cruising by a mailbox, having a passenger lean out the window and destroy a mailbox with one swing of a baseball bat.
Since it was a hit-and-run crime, the imbeciles were hard to catch. Occasionally, one would catch themselves. One memorable dope tried to use his fist instead of a ball bat and ended up in the ER with a mangled paw. Another genius leaned out too far, looking for the box, and found it with his thick skull. You can see the level of intelligence we were dealing with here but, still, they were difficult to catch in the act.
Finally the victims began to retaliate. Up in Pine Ridge the fools added to the destruction by running over the box and post. The flimsy aluminum posts bent over easily, and the box was squashed under the car. To counteract this, some of us put our mailboxes on sawed-off telephone poles, set in concrete. Shortly thereafter, a dufuss, who tried to run over one of these, was launched through the windshield after the sudden stop--a Jeep vs a telephone pole being no contest.
Another popular sport was "burning" a lawn. This was done by driving a car onto the grass at high speed, then slamming on the brakes, the resultant skid ripping up the lawn. Corner lots were particularly susceptible. Residents tried to stop this by placing large bolders in the swale. Unfortunately, the swale was owned by the City who couldn't allow these hazards or the attendant liability.
One day we received a call from an outraged repeat victim. He wanted us to inspect his protective measures. In his front yard we found spikes driven in the ground at two-foot intervals. They protruded from the ground about 4 inches. "Let 'em burn me now," he growled. We explained that his probable victim, would be a yardman, or neighborhood child who was accidentally impaled in his spike garden. And said victim would soon relieve him of the worry of protecting his home, because they'd own it, awarded by the civil courts. Our homeowner, a retired Army Major, saw our point and removed the spikes. He wasn't, however, finished.
Soon we rushed to his home on Crayton Road where a vehicle was stopped in the middle of the street, with two teenagers huddled nearby, terrified and trembling. The vehicle bore the ragged holes made by shotgun pellets, shot at an angle. The Major stood nearby, gloating.
"Bet they'll think twice about bashing mailboxes and burning lawns now," he said. And he was correct. Most of the vandalism ended that night.
Doesn't take long for word to get around that if you go out smashing and bashing there might be a wild old coot waiting in the bushes. With a 12 gauge shotgun loaded with double-O buck. That he'd use to blow your doors off.
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