On Easter weekend a drunk driver hit a truck parked on the street, which lurched forward and knocked over my almost indestructible letterbox that Rod’s dad made in the early 70’s. He’d put it together with 3 steel rods so it couldn’t be destroyed by teenage boys playing with explosives. The rods survived but it took two of Rod’s friends to put them close to upright again.
A brickie friend, John, offered to build me a new postbox. I have had the titanium hip and femur rod that was put in to keep Rod walking when cancer was removed from his leg. I’d wondered just what on earth to do with it but knew it had to be something special. I mentioned to John about adding this to the inside of the new box. He said it would be his honour.
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Some interesting things about my new letterbox
(that’s a cleverly camouflaged memorial to my husband):
- Rod’s hip and femur rod are in the middle of the box, with the hip ball at the top, in about the centre of the box, with the ball slightly higher so it can be seen.
- The house numbers that will be put on the front tomorrow are from a very special handmade card that friends made for Rod on his 60th birthday. Luckily the 6 can be turned upside down so it becomes the number 9.
- Not long after we met in the Commodore Fidonet echo, Rod wrote the only Offline Mail Reader for the C128. Over 100 Commodore 128 users around the globe used his app to read and reply to all kinds of online Fidonet messages.
- Hundreds of Australian online merchants know Rod for his Ozpost shipping plugin for numerous shopping cart systems. Again, mail and postage.
- The original steel rods that formed the foundation for the first letterbox are still in place. John worked around the bent rods that couldn’t be moved. A comment about Rod’s twisted sense of humour and sometimes rigid views goes without saying here.
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