Sidetracked Charley

I live in rural America. And I love it here. I even most times love what I do not have because I choose to live outside cities. But some of the things I do not have cause problems defining where I live. I do not have a zip code. I borrow neighboring zip codes depending on who is asking. In the United States of America a zip code is five or nine numbers that are added to a postal address to assist the sorting of mail. There are about 43,000 zip codes. They are attached to post offices which the USPS wants to reduce. Post Offices are attached largely to cities these days. Once Black Lake had a post office and our zip code I am told was 87734. But the USPS deleted that post office because there was no city but just a large rural area with farms and ranches and people like myself which loved living in rural areas.  When the Black Lake post office was closed the zip code was moved to Ocate, NM which is over the mountain and through the canyon and most notably in an entire other county. ...

Cattails in the Snow I live in Black Lake, New Mexico. It is five miles south of Angel Fire, 2 1/2 hours from Santa Fe, 45 minutes from Taos, and two hours from our county seat of Raton. And, most importantly at the moment, a 40 minute drive from my post office of record. Ocate Post Office is on the other side of the mountain, and in another county. It has no grocery store, no court house, no feed store, no WalMart, and no UPS store. In short the only reason to go to Ocate is to go to the post office. When I first moved here,14 years ago, we had no mail service. Most of us of Twix, Tween and Beyond Black Lake rented a box at the Angel Fire Post Office. It did not come free because our post office of record (your US government at its best) was in Ocate. The Angel Fire Post Office then was not a government run post office but contract, and fees for boxes got expensive. After some lobby efforts we managed to get rural route delivery three days a week: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday....

Another Internet purchase has gone astray. I love to shope on the Internet but it comes with certain inherent issues; mainly shipping address. I live in a rural area and have a postal box up by the highway. And a street address. If a package is being shipped by United States Postal Service they will deliver only to the box. And if UPS only to the street address. Fedex in the area is so screwed up I don't even want to hazard a guess. But everything only gets more complicated from that point. Because my street address is technically one zip code and my box address another. I live in the unincorporated area of Black Lake which technically does not have a zip code. UPS and Fedex are not suppose to use zip codes for delivery, but they do and if I have my box address on a package then UPS gets it on the wrong side of the mountain and Fedex puts it in the wrong distribution center. If I put the street address on something which is being shipped by US mail it winds up in general delivery a...