Kewpie doll and ceegar being sent to: Route 2, Frederick Wisconsin
1 Like
I didn’t know it was a national standard. The houses on either side of me were built on two lots but still have two numbers assigned. I have a wooden post but I have three boxes on them. We were required to share. I’m not sure how I’d get the post out of there if it rotted or the plow hit it. I’m on a curve too but it’s been 30 years and not hit. I’d have to do something temp until spring. Two houses down there is actually a tree displacing the steel post. Poor place for a tree.
Since 911 is national - I guess it’s considered a national standard.
When I was still living in WI, my neighbor put the broken off post in a 5 gallon pail filled with gravel as a “temporary” fix. It stayed that way for about 8 months. All the boxes were on my side of the road and they lived across the street, down a long driveway. They kept moving their “temporary” box close to my driveway so they could pull in and not get out to get their mail. Meanwhile, my box was a decent distance from the driveway to avoid hitting it. They had theirs right next to my entrance. Each time I moved it away, they would put it back. So I dug a hole even further away than normal and sunk it in the ground, pail and all. They finally got the message (or were just too lazy to pull it out) and it stayed there the rest of the time I lived there…
It’s not a national standard. Every house I’ve had has been the opposite. As I drive down the street towards higher house numbers, the houses on the right are odd. And now that I think of it, I’ve had 5 houses and they were all odd numbered houses and I’ve only had houses on the north or east side of the street.
Also the house I grew up in was odd numbered and on the right as the numbers increased.
Yeah, had a discussion with the folks on either side of me on where to put our joint post. They, or at least one tried to bully me to put it in th3 center of my yard bu5 I wanted it on the edge where the light pole was. Slightly longer walk for one. I thought, geez I’m hosting three boxes and maintaining them, I should be able to not hav3 it in the middle of my yard. For good or bad I made sure i5 was just over my line so I’d have control if it.
1 Like
They seem to be pretty protective of the 911 number. I took a little heat from the state coordinator when we put in our pbx phone system. In our large building, you had to dial 9 for an outside line. So dialing 911 from any phone would go nowhere. So instead of stickers on all the phones to dial. 9-911 which would mean emergency folks would show up and no one would know where they were supposed to go, I set it up so that you’d dial 5-911 and would go to the main desk to be able to direct the response. Well the guy didn’t like it and wanted a completely different number to call. I said it’s not like a house and every large building has the same issue. Another battle.
Dad built this house back in 1973, it is a corner lot, with the house facing Y street, the main upper driveway is on Z street, he wanted to put the mail box on Z street, but the city made him out it on Y street, the mail box is as far away from both driveways as the lot allows at the corner, it is a pain with delivery’s sometimes cause they try to use the lower drive and it is a long walk to the front door… lol…
All the odd house numbers are on the right in the streets running like ours, our other house is also odd on the right, even the main 5 lane road is odd numbers on the right…
We did have one house, a much newer build (we were the last house built on the end of the road in 2000) that was even on the right…
If I understand it correctly, numbers are not mandated to be even on the right side or left side, only that you can not have even and odd numbers on the same side of the road, meaning, if a road runs along side a river, you can not have house numbers going 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, on the same side, they either have to be 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 or 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 as the numbers are increasing as you move away from the start (or intersection?) of the road…
Your post made me think of a situation a company I worked for faced regarding the entrance to one of their facilities. When the building was put up, there was an existing driveway to a county road. The owner found out the taxation amount was related to having access to this county road. So he moved the entrance to an adjacent road that was city controlled. I recall the uproar over the change but he was stubborn about it and it indeed got changed.
Minneapolis is crazy town but the streets are alphabetical so they got that right. Lyndale, Nicolet etc so you always know how far off target you are and which direction you need to drive. St. Paul uses a spoke and hub layout so you never know where you are. I’ve always lived on even numbers to the right on the right. Of course depending on which way you are driving.
When I lived in WI, where they had engineered the developments, you always knew EXACTLY where you were with addresses like N145 W11545. Can’t get any more specific than that with a cartesian grid layout.
Then I moved out East to the early settlement areas and you have addresses like 1, 2…roads winding every which way…name changes in the middle of a straight road…it was kind of shocking at first.
Never noticed that! Then North East had street named for the presidents. In my school years lived in South East Mpls, when in elementary school found it odd we drove south to get downtown.
That might be a legacy of the Northeast’s English roots. In London, it’s fairly typical for the same road to change its name a few times over its length.
1 Like
Try US-1, each town it passes through gives it a different name. I think A1A s the same, different town, different name. Most of us just call it US-1 or A1A. It is confusing to newcomers.
That’s not uncommon - even here in New England (especially when you cross town boundaries.
In Syracuse NY there’s these roads that lead up to Erie Blvd. As you cross Erie Blvd the road name you’re on changes. Reason being - Erie Blvd use to be the Erie Canal and those roads would bring people down to the Canal to load and unload goods from either side. There wasn’t a bridge over the Canal. And at one time they were different towns. Syracuse on one side and Eastwood on the other. Later Eastwood was absorbed into Syracuse.
And, what makes things even more confusing for non-local folks, many SatNav systems use the street name, rather than the highway number designation.
This phenomenon fooled a news reporter recently. A pedestrian was hit by a car, on Route 1, but the online news article stated that he was “hit by a car on Edgar Avenue, which runs parallel to Route 1”. I emailed the guy to explain that Edgar Avenue IS Route 1 in that town, and he later corrected his article.
The media can’t tell a cruise ship from an ocean liner, or a Boeing from a Beechcraft.
People traveling through typically use the route number (RTE 1/1A) and when asking directions, locals use the street name (RTE1 = Lafayette). I used to get funny looks when I would be talking about directions using the numbers. I came down 114…oh, you mean Andover Street…funny part is, there are numerous signs along the way indicating the route number but almost no cross street signs with the street name.
Not to mention the unusual pronunciations in the Northeast-
Peabuddy not Peabody
Portsmith- not Portsmouth
Woosta not Worcester
Rare, but every once in a while a reporter will refer to the Kennedy Space Center as Cape Canaveral, but the Air Force adds to the confusion, their portion of the space center is Cape Canaveral AB, now Space Force Base.
In Northern VA there is a road that has 6 names and 4 Rt numbers. Springvale Rd (Rt674), Baron Cameron Ave (Rt606), Elden St, Centreville Rd (Rt657), Walney Rd, Braddock RD (Rt620). It gets even worse in the little backwater I live in now.