I’m not stranger to your run-of-the-mill neighborhood hjinks. TPing houses and ding-dong ditching were nothing out of the ordinary in my neighborhood.

But until reading this story, I genuinely thought kids smashing mailboxes with baseball bats was something that only happened in movies and cartoons!

But when this welder’s customer had had 3 mailboxes destroyed by neighborhood kids, he built him a special mailbox that made sure no one would ever mess with his property again!

Check it out!

some years ago this happened…

So some years ago I was attending a welding school to get my degree and an elderly gentleman came in asking for some help in repairing his mailbox.

After some dialog it turns out that there were some kids in his neighborhood that were constantly breaking his mailbox with ride by base ball bat attacks.

Apparently this was the 3rd mailbox he had to replace and didn’t have the money to buy another one because of his severely fixed income.

He wanted to know if we could fix it and how much it would cost him.

But OP’s specific skill set allowed him to do more than just help the old man fix his mailbox…

Well we looked at the mailbox and it was absolutely trashed, looked like someone had not only hit it with a baseball bat but also ran over it with a tank.

After some deliberation between us we decided to help the gentleman out. So we proceeded to do what welders do best… we welded.

We put together a mailbox made with 3/8 inch steel plate that we shaped to be the same size as his previous one, made the pole 5 feet long so that it buries with about 3 feet of material.

We even put the little red flag and a door on it, looked like a regular mail box from a little distance.

When the man came back to the shop, it turns out the trick mailbox had worked a little too well!

Fast forward 2 weeks the elderly man shows back up with a cake his wife baked and a huge grin on his face.

Turns out the kids that were doing the destruction showed back up.

They tried to break his mailbox by doing their regular drive by and ended up only breaking their hands, and had to go to the hospital.

Turns out it was one of his neighbors kids. Mailbox suffered a VERY small ding, not even enough to consider damage.

Well, that’s definitely one way to make sure no one ever even thinks about touching your mailbox again! I bet those kids learned their lesson!

Reddit rushed to the comments with their own stories of deterring neighborhood vandalism…

This user’s local council employed a similar strategy when dealing with a trash can vandal.

And this user proved that if you’re having a problem with rowdy neighborhood kids, you need to find yourself a welder!

And finally, this user knew someone who dealt with the problem by camouflaging a pole right in front of his mailbox!

Hey, if you choose to play stupid games, don’t blame anyone else when you win stupid prizes!

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.