I wanted to see if I could get mail delivered to a lot that looks like it has residences on it but doesn't. These facades mask the back of part of a self-storage building that was constructed in 1997 or 1998 on a vacant lot at the edge of an urban residential neighborhood in Kansas City. The company built the facades to blend in better with the existing older houses and apartment buildings on the street. The storage company's office and address is on the adjacent street.

A Sanborn map from 1909 shows when this lot housed the All Souls Unitarian Church from 1906-1951, when the church building burned down. The church was also called The Liberal Center at one point in this location when Leon M. Birkhead was the pastor. So I decided to use 3425 as the address, which the post office currently lists as non-deliverable.

January 3, 2006: Bill H. and I bought the cheapest mailbox at the hardware store and affixed 3425 decals to the front of the box. Bill then securely attached the box to the front yard fence with zip ties. (Plus he drove us to the hardware store and the task site and the post office...)

Then I got greedy and we mailed three letters that should be postmarked on January 4: one to Leon Birkhead and two to the Liberal Center, both at the same address on Baltimore.

January 4: Mailbox is still there. We drove by because I was anxious to know if it survived the first day. No mail yet, but then it's too early for that.

Saturday evening, January 5: Uh oh. My greedy antsiness may have endangered the operation. We stopped by the mailbox tonight, and as soon as we stopped, a guy in the house across the street came outside and stood on his porch. Bill H said he seemed to be watching us. Bill waved to the guy as we drove off.

So this is why it's better "the farther it is from a regular, recognized address"...

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I had to go back to school on January 10. The mailbox was still up and intact. I made Bill H stop by to check on our way to the airport that morning. No mail.

Eventually we got the three letters returned to us (at two different return addresses) as undeliverable. Perhaps we shouldn't have used return addresses, but curiosity kills this cat every time, so I wanted some way to know for sure if the post office wouldn't deliver.

Lowteck also sent mail to the address, but we don't know definitely if it was delivered or trashed or what since Bill H suspended his mailbox duties during bad winter weather and resulting ice, so we have a couple of weeks that are unreportable. Bill just checked again today (Jan 30), and the mailbox is gone.

I feel a bit guilty for posting this task since we didn't actually receive mail, but we did use the mailbox (by mailing something to it), which managed to remain up for over a week at least. Since two out of three previous task completions didn't actually receive mail but got points, we're going with that task history and posting unless y'all X us. Plus Bill H can't count me as a collaborator on The Failure since I've already done that (unless it changes to be repeatable...), and I was an obsessive fiend about checking the mailbox while I was still in town so I greedily demand part of the credit. And he was ready to give me up if questioned!