Small Towns

[sinanju]

I come from a small town. My parents didn't even have an actual street address until long after I moved away. If you wanted to send them a letter, you sent it to the PO Box. If you wanted to visit, you had to be told how to find their house without benefit of street numbers. Fortunately, it was a street with few houses on it so it wasn't hard.

I just called the local florist there long distance to arrange to have flowers delivered to my mother for her birthday. The floriest answered, asking what I wanted. I said i wanted to send flower to my mother for her birthday. He asked her name. I told him. I told him what I wanted. I gave him my card number to pay for it.

He never asked her address. He already knew where my parents live.

A college friend of mine (an army brat who mostly lived in the DC metro area) is still tickled to this day that she once sent me a letter during summer break from college addressed with nothing but my name and the town, state and zip code and it still got to me.

Small towns. Ya gotta love 'em. (But live in 'em anymore? Hell no!)

Comments

[aiglet.livejournal.com]

My boyfriend and a friend of his in AZ have an experiment going to find the minimum amount of information you can put on a piece of mail and still get it delivered.

I'm holding out for last name and zip+4 (because wasn't the point of the +4 that it would give you basically house-by-house locations on things?), but I think the experiment's been stymied by various concerns over being tagged as terrorists.

It is nifty that you can get things delivered to your mom by just her name, though -- there's something sort of reassuring about knowing that sort of community still exists.

Ah americans.. you gotta love 'em

[irishkate.livejournal.com]

My house has no number, the "street name" is just a description of where the road goes and there is no zip code or other postal address (other than the town name of course).

If you wanted to find the house you would have to have directions. But the postman would probably get the letter to my house with just my name and the city name on it. Though it might try another house first depending on which way around he went...

Only one city in Ireland has a postal code.
Even in the UK the post code identifies the house to within a choice of about 4 houses anyway..they tend to only ask for the house number and post code..really confuses them when I try to buy stuff.. our house has neither!