Mailbox drama

If I believed in reincarnation, I would say that our mailbox must have done something terrible in a past life. That poor thing has been wrecked quite a few times since we've moved in. Here's the whole story as I remember it:

Our mailbox post holds the neighbors' mailbox as well. When we moved in, the post was already in rough shape. Someone had added some reinforcing boards to the post, probably because it was rotting. I believe it was the summer after we moved in when the post rotted completely off. Our mailboxes were laying on the ground.

I had saved the "For Sale" sign from the realtor. The post was big enough and painted, so I replaced the rotten post w/ the recycled realtor's post. Everything was fine again.

Last winter, the guy that was plowing our neighbors' driveway backed into it and knocked it right over. I went out and told him he knocked it over, and he acted like he didn't believe me. He said he would come back and fix it. His idea of fixing it: prop it up in the 2' snow bank along the road.

We weren't very happy, but it worked for a while ... until the snow melted. I tried to prop it up w/ some boards and rocks until we got some warmer weather with marginal success.

My neighbor decided to fix it. He got one of those nice treated posts and concreted the base in the hole. It looked great. We even both bought new mailboxes to finish off the project.

Then before Christmas, the township snowplow sheared the post right off. The mailboxes were on the ground once again. Our neighbor called the township and they sent a guy out to fix it. Yeah, right. He screwed the pieces back together w/ 3 or 4 screws and left.

Well, yesterday the post fell apart again. So last night, I took some 2x4 cleats and screwed them to both sides of the post. It should hold up until spring. But last night it felt like the base of the post was broken, too.

So it looks like we'll moving to our 4th mailbox post this spring. I'm thinking of getting my friend Drew to weld a steel one for me this time. I'm tired of working on the mailbox post in the snow in the dark.