Cross Purpose: Restore Mailbox to Northern La Mesa Neighborhood

Who died?

That’s the first thought of motorists passing a wooden cross at the intersection of Dugan Avenue and Laird Street in north La Mesa, not far from Jackson Park.

A small white cross planted in the grass evokes the makeshift memorials often seen at sites of fatal car accidents.

But the whitewashed cross mourns not a person but a mailbox.

Three weeks ago, the U.S. Postal Service removed the standard blue mailbox, which had been bolted to the concrete sidewalk at that northwest corner for decades. 

Jack Lewis, a 69-year-old former Teamster, who later retired from SeaWorld, knew the mailbox was about to be yanked—but didn’t like it. 

Not long after its removal, he built a cross a little over 2 feet high and planted it in front of his home.

He attached a piece of a postal box with a note that says: “Please come back.”

Lewis, who has lived at the corner with his wife, Elisa,  since 1992, said he recalls the day the mailbox was removed.

“We saw the fellow doing it,” Lewis said. “We said: ‘We’re going to miss it.’ He ignored us and did his job.”

He says the neighborhood has gotten a kick out of the memorial—adding their own flowers to the birds-of-paradise from his front yard.

People who drive or walk by read the message “and just start laughing,” Lewis said last week.

The mailbox carried a note over the summer saying it would be removed in August, but the extraction didn’t occur until this month.

Lewis said the mailbox has been anchored to the concrete at several different spots in that corner for decades—and has been used dailty by some neighbors for bill-paying.

Some years ago, a group of youngsters exploded something in the mailbox—leading to an on-site investigation by a group of serious federal agents.

Today, indentations are all that remain of the neighborhood mailbox.

Lewis isn’t worried about the Postal Service’s reaction to the appeal.

“They can’t do anything to me,” he said.