What were they thinking?
So I moved out into the boondocks a few months ago. It's only about 5 minutes from "town" (2500 or so people), but there's no sewer, no cable and no copper based high speed tubes, only air based, or dial up tubes. None of these are that big of a deal, as septic, satellite and wireless tubes are decent workarounds. What really gets me though is the addressing system in BFI (bum-fuck Indiana).
My entire county only has like 10k people, so we're fairly far behind the times in a lot of things, which is understandable. What the hell were they thinking when they came up with the Rural Route addressing system though? The best I can tell is that they had X number of mail carriers and let them pick their own routes that went in roughly a circular fashion. On my route, it comes from town, starting with Box 1, goes about 500 feet from my house, takes a left turn, goes around a huge country block, comes directly past my house and takes a left at the same crossroads 500 feet from my house and goes out to the highway, and ends.
The trouble is, this address is good for nothing except giving the mailman a mailbox to put your mail in. there's no physical correlation to where the house is located and many websites balk at the address, thinking it's a PO Box (RR X Box Y, Yourtown USA). With enhanced 911 coming out, they're talking about going to physical addresses for all houses that aren't in town...imagine that, using the county road names/numbers, what a concept! They've been talking about it for quite some time though, and nothing has come of it.
Is anyone else's hometown/county in the same backwards state as mine as far as this goes?
My entire county only has like 10k people, so we're fairly far behind the times in a lot of things, which is understandable. What the hell were they thinking when they came up with the Rural Route addressing system though? The best I can tell is that they had X number of mail carriers and let them pick their own routes that went in roughly a circular fashion. On my route, it comes from town, starting with Box 1, goes about 500 feet from my house, takes a left turn, goes around a huge country block, comes directly past my house and takes a left at the same crossroads 500 feet from my house and goes out to the highway, and ends.
The trouble is, this address is good for nothing except giving the mailman a mailbox to put your mail in. there's no physical correlation to where the house is located and many websites balk at the address, thinking it's a PO Box (RR X Box Y, Yourtown USA). With enhanced 911 coming out, they're talking about going to physical addresses for all houses that aren't in town...imagine that, using the county road names/numbers, what a concept! They've been talking about it for quite some time though, and nothing has come of it.
Is anyone else's hometown/county in the same backwards state as mine as far as this goes?
7 Comments:
SS
Matter of fact there are a lot of people in the same situation. Just be glad you don't live in Missouri. Hey what county are you in anyway? Thanks. TB
Who is TB, a certain bleach enthusiast I know?
Greene
Wow dude, that sounds annoying. I must however, give props to the people in Elnora because they moved away from RR and have addresses.
Crazed. Hope all is well man.
Oh, that last comment was from me, Lucas.
My parent's house in Monrovia had a RR address. A few years ago the town named the street and everyone got a real address. I didn't know the reason until now. Thanks for the edutainment scubasteve.
and good luck if you want to get anything shipped to your house ups... if i remember right when i lived out in your neck of the woods we had to slap a county road number on along with the rr box number. should be extra complicated when your credit card won't validate because of the address mismatch. go ahead and take headache pills now before you have anything shipped.
i've never had too much trouble with shipping stuff. I think there's only been once that a web application didn't like my address, and I just called customer service and they straightened it out. It probably helps that there are at least 3 routes in my "town" that are on rural routes.
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