Life in the Sticks

April 11, 2012 Riley Family, Rural

If you’re going to live in a rural area, especially in the heart of California, chances are good that you may have need to call the fire department at some point. And since you live in a rural area, chances are good that the response time will not be in that “under 5 minutes” category I hear tell of.

For example, I was just talking to my friend KC, who volunteers for the fire department (the whole dept is pretty much peopled by volunteers) and he said one of his biggest problems is FINDING the house that requires an emergency response. So the next time you think, oh, just look for the house with the green mailbox, across from that very large rock, you know it’s the only really big rock on that road, instead think about equipping your house with residential address plaques. If you feel the need to be extra fancy, because the guy next door uses an outhouse as his primary form of facilities, you might shoot for the bronze address plaques.

I would like to throw a shout of support to anyone who chooses to go for the custom address plaques, and would be willing to bet you could get them to look a lot like those custom rural mailboxes that I am prone to spot, like the wine barrel, the woven stick reindeer, the bronze pig, the tie-dyed mailbox, and my personal favorite – the one so large my child keeps asking if he can crawl inside of it (I always tell him no because I have no idea if that is against some sort of federal law, it being a mailbox and all…).

Anyway, whichever you choose, make sure that ‘making your address is visible’ is at the top of your priority list when you live rural. Because if the time should ever come, you’ll be glad you can be found.

This post inspired by the good people at Just Address Plaques.