Third Floor: Send me your mailboxes | Maryland Gazette (HometownGlenBurnie.com)

Was it heading for the green and yellow, 2-foot-long lure - complete with realistic looking hooks - a few blocks away on the same road? No telling.

I'm talking about the art mailboxes that have popped up over the last several years. Whether made commercially or by the homeowners themselves, these personal expressions of postal expectations are now noteworthy sights along area roads.

I'm old enough to remember when these oddities started showing up in mail order catalogs, when that was the pinnacle of ordering something exotic for yourself. Now you can find them in your local hardware store, Amazon.com or even the occasional roadside stand. Even the ones mass produced in China can qualify for unique status in a neighborhood or even on a single street where they're one of a kind.

We've done a couple of stories on a local craftsman who spends his time making unbelievably detailed, custom mailboxes for friends and family. Multiply his work by the number of backyard tinkerers and you begin to see the potential for diversity.

Do these mailboxes say something about the owner? You tell me. If you've got one of these unique boxes, snap a picture and e-mail it - or put that box to good use and drop the photo in regular mail.

When you send your picture, include a brief explanation of why you use this mailbox. Tell me if its design means something special to you or if it's just a pretty decoration that caught your eye.

Once I get a good assortment, I'll print the most interesting ones.

In the interest of full disclosure, my mailbox at home is white with red polka dots. It's a custom job that owes its inspiration to my wife.

She's a lover of ladybugs. Her aunt Belle collected all things ladybugs, including the red and black insects themselves. Now that she's passed away, my wife likes to tell our kids that a ladybug landing on your shoulder might just be Belle dropping by for a visit.

Her idea was to paint ladybugs. But the polka dots never got their legs, antenna or spots. That's OK. Commercial versions of ladybug mailboxes are now available in local hardware stores. We like the unfinished, and slightly faded, tribute to Belle just fine.

Do all personalized mailboxes have such significance?

My kids and I have noticed a number of odd ones around our neighborhood. We've got a large mouth bass going for a fly too, but no matching lure. You've got to assume both varieties belong to people who love to fish.

We've also got a plastic manatee and a section of whale vertebrae.

Is the manatee a fond memorial to that marine mammal that wandered into the Chesapeake Bay a few years ago? I've always wanted to ask the owner of the vertebrae where he found it and if he's a chiropractor who dreams big.

There's a wooden train engine down the street but it's overshadowed by the collage next door made of of found objects glued together. Resuing drawer pulls, latches and hinges seem like a clever way to get rid all those bits of hardware that collect in every homeowner's work space.

These mailboxes should not be confused with the equally noteworthy, monumental variety. These are built into some brick or stone structure, usually to match the house or the landscape details.

There's one in my neighborhood that's faux stucco, just like the house, and has red clay roof tiles as both trim and put together as a newspaper slot. I see the paper tossed on the ground a lot when I walk by there.

How do you explain the miniature version of the meticulous Craftsman style bungalow in my neighborhood? Or the replica of a famous bay lighthouse? Where do you even find something like that?

So what's your mailbox look like? Is the message more than just, "I've got mail?" Write me and let me know.

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Rick Hutzell is the editor of the Maryland Gazette. E-mail him at rhutzell@mdgazette.com