This reminds me of a 100 year old man whom I met on Academy Ave in Providence (around Elmhurst). He told me his father built the house where he lives and that when he was a kid you couldn’t see the next house. When the mail came, especially on winter, they would leave the mail in a mailbox at the beginning of the street. It wouldn’t go home by home because the wheels of the horse carriage would get stuck in the mud. Love this kind of stuff