Things that happen in your small town that you wonder if it happens everywhere?

[Fuddyduddy1952]

The town I grew up in, in NW Oklahoma, had a population of less than 300. Everyone knows everybody else, including the postmaster. A few years back, I wrote a letter to my elderly grade school teacher. Not knowing her address, I just addressed it to her in care of the town. She of course got the letter and sent me a reply.

I thought you were going to say you got the letter back with a big "C+" in red with all mistakes circled.

 

[jyoutz]

That station gets thousands of people through it every summer as they float the middle fork, and we close it for the winter. We do have one lookout, in the middle of the wilderness, that you have to hike five miles to get to after you get to the end of the horse trail. Been to it once, about a decade ago.

Then the fire kids figured out I’m in my sixties, and won’t let me do anything physical. Went out to find four septic tanks and get them pumped. Anytime i picked up a tool, they would take it back, and tell me I’m the brains, and they are the backs. Finally asked them what was going on. And one of them told me that their crew boss, had told them that if they let me get hurt, there would be hell to pay.

So, I went to where he was digging, and helped him. He just made a comment about me being as stubborn as his Dad, and told me to let him know if I got tired.

And, we had quite a few stations and lookouts, that had never been given addresses. All the local 911 responders know exactly how to get to them if they are drivable. Most of them worked for the Forest when they were younger.

Most of the back country pilots know where the ones you can’t drive to are. You can see from peak to peak, and lookout site to lookout site. They use them as way points if they haven’t got GPS instrumentation. Interesting trivia, is that you can get a strong cell signal at most of the lookouts, because you have line of sight to a cell tower.

I had to get addresses for them, because someone in Washington, decided we needed to clear up all the deficiencies in our buildings, and real property database. Buildings on roads are easy, the roads guy, has the station, mileage to all of them. So, we just made those up, and let the Counties know what we had come up with. One of the three County Clerks got pissy about it. The other two were fine with it.. Just about all hikers have some form of GPS tracker, satellite communicator, they use if they get into trouble, so the Dispatcher knows what Lat and Long they are at.

All this computerized mapping has some strong advantages.

Hello to you from a Region 3 FS employee.

 

[Gator6x4]

The town I grew up in, in NW Oklahoma, had a population of less than 300. Everyone knows everybody else, including the postmaster. A few years back, I wrote a letter to my elderly grade school teacher. Not knowing her address, I just addressed it to her in care of the town. She of course got the letter and sent me a reply.

Same with the rural community I grew up in. I remember many a day being told to go check the mail, open the mail box and find letters addressed to my mother and father with only there name on the letter. Stamps were three cents for letters and one cent for a post card. I don't ever remember a letter being returned for insufficient postage.

I often wondered how we got our mail after being exposed to street names, house number and zip codes Etc.

As a teenager we would leave the country and go to town at night get a drink etc. The Shell Station sold ice cream and we could get a large cone for 5 cents. Sometimes we would even get a cone with grease on it and eat down to the grease and throw the rest away.

 

[bigtiller]

All the farm houses and acreages for ~ 4 mile radius around town shared one of two address...RR1 or RR2.

RR stood for Rural Route

Talk about knowing your customer!

 

[Gator6x4]

All the farm houses and acreages for ~ 4 mile radius around town shared one of two address...RR1 or RR2.

RR stood for Rural Route

Talk about knowing your customer!

Knowing you customers is right. My younger sister had the Croup. The Doctor prescribed Paregoric. My older brother and I were given the prescription the Home Visit Doctor (Get one of those today) wrote and advised take this to (Druggist Name) and gave us a 20 dollar bill and tell him if it is more than this that either my father or her would pay the rest the next time they stopped by.

Paregoric is an opioid. Today if two tow headed children went to the Drug store with a note and a prescription for such the law would have been called. Or the resident drug heads would have knocked us in the head as soon as we left the Drug Store to get the paregoric.

 

[kenmbz]

In MA at my uncles house, we just used name, road, town and mail showed up.
Helps that our neighbor ran the local Post Office.

My Uncles house had a front room which had been the local library in the late 1800's.
We still had some books from the 1880's in the book rack in that room (turned into a guest bedroom).

A general store, run by the sheriff and family about 30 min drive.
He also owned the apt complex above the store, I think 3 apartments.

Spent quite a bit of time as a child there (cheap vacations) since we didn't have a lot of money growing up and my Uncle was not at the house much.

 

[Jstpssng]

All the farm houses and acreages for ~ 4 mile radius around town shared one of two address...RR1 or RR2.

RR stood for Rural Route

Talk about knowing your customer!

We were on RFD #3, and a number. I don’t recall what the number was.

 

[stuckmotor]

Knowing you customers is right. My younger sister had the Croup. The Doctor prescribed Paregoric. My older brother and I were given the prescription the Home Visit Doctor (Get one of those today) wrote and advised take this to (Druggist Name) and gave us a 20 dollar bill and tell him if it is more than this that either my father or her would pay the rest the next time they stopped by.

Paregoric is an opioid. Today if two tow headed children went to the Drug store with a note and a prescription for such the law would have been called. Or the resident drug heads would have knocked us in the head as soon as we left the Drug Store to get the paregoric.

There used to be a lady around here who was addicted to paregorc. My mother used to refer to her as the paregorc woman. I can taste the nasty stuff now just from thinking about it.

 

[3Ts]

I'm in a small town as well, my address is 4 numbers, 2 letters, and 3 numbers(#### FM ###). I was out of state one time recently and needed to rent a car. I was told that my address wasn't a normal (or real) address, but they accepted it after showing my drivers license.

In this town, we don't use addresses or even street names amongst the locals. We use reference points that may or may not still exist. One of which is the old Pony Express relay station, and there are cross roads or landmarks that have local names such as Liberty Hill.

 

[jigs_n_fixtures]

Go down here to the red house, then the second barn on the left, turn right, until you get to the green house, and turn left. Then go about a mile to the blue house on your left, then turn right and go up the hill, and you’ll see an old bulldozer……

I’m color blind, which doesn’t really matter, because all those houses have been repainted some other color several times. But, if you’re a local you know what color they were originally.