Putting the town name on water towers, started in the early days of aviation. Pilots would get lost sometimes, so they would look for a town, fly low, look to see the name of the town, and then look at the map to see where they were.
US Mailboxes are placed on the road so that the mail carriers can drive from one box to another and put the mail in and keep on going. It would take them forever to have to drive up long driveways as are common in more rural areas. A mail carrier push his mail cart (trolley?) down the sidewalk also saves a lot of time by not having to walk up to each door. It's simply for efficiency.
And the mail trucks are the only type of vehicle in which the driver is on the right side. Therefore, the driver does not to have to reach across to the window.
I delivered 17 years in San Jose, CA. Suburban area, single family homes. Walking route, almost 500 houses. Mail Boxes were near the front door of each house.
My mailbox is on the wall of my house next to the front door. I can just lean out and get my mail. I live in a suburb of Minneapolis. My mail carrier walks from house to house. In the winter I shovel a path across the yard for him so he doesn’t have to slog through deep snow or take the long way out to the street and up my driveway. Some people have mailboxes that are locked, the mail goes in a slot at the front but you need a key to open the top to retrieve it. My brother lives in another suburb and he has a mailbox at the curb, as does everyone else in the neighborhood. It seems that a neighborhood is either one or the other. I think older neighborhoods, like mine, have the mailboxes on the house.
City people have mailmen bring their mail to the house on foot, cause the houses are so close together. Rural areas usually have the mailbox out by the road, so the mailman can drive from one box to another.
I'd say that's a little oversimplified and inaccurate. I guess I would say that the farther you are from the center of a city, the farther your mail box tends to be from the home. When we really lived IN the city, the mailbox was on the wall next to the door. My parents still live in the city, but they're now so far from the center of it all that the mailbox is actually across the street. 🤣
I have also seen mailboxes at the end of the road so you might actually have to walk for 10 or 15 minutes or drive to get your mail. In real rural areas the mailbox can be over a mile or more than 2km from the actual front door of the house. So Lawrence has still stay close to the city.
To add to that, in the US our mailboxes come with a red flag on it. This way you can send mail out as well. You just raise the flag to notify the mailman you got mail to send.
@@joeyjohnson4826 I've managed to go 52 years without getting a tattoo, but I HAVE pondered getting one that reads, "I feared for my life, and the lives of my family." 🤣
In the U.S., taking someones mail is a federal crime which can lead to huge fines (quarter of a million) and more than a decade in federal prison.... per offense.
@@jtzutube I believe it varies by which state the act occurs in, some might be by number of items stolen or it might be by number of mailboxes stolen from. And if I am not mistaken, the law applies to those who steal mail as well as those who receive stolen mail or who benefit from the mail theft.
Recently a string of mail thefts in my hometown have gone uninvestigated. The town police have been notified and the county sheriff as well as the local postmaster.
@@the_dog_says_moo Federal offenses still fall into Felony and misdemeanors. Federal Felonys have five classes A,B,C,D,E with A being the worst. Misdemeanors are less then 1 year in prison. Stealing any mail is a Federal misdemeanor, with up to 1 year in prison. Stealing leading to defraud, steal property/identity, and or put addressee in any duress is a Federal Felony.
@@edwardmclaughlin719 I've had a couple family member charged with Mail fraud and id theft for stealing from other family members and an elderly community. They are now serving 25 yrs. On a class A Federal Felony
@@the_dog_says_moo Felony just means above a misdemeanor. They can be both state or federal involving more than a year of jail. Different degrees of felonies too.
Yellow was adopted as the standard color for North American school buses in 1939. In April of that year, rural education specialist Frank W. Cyr organized a national conference at Columbia University to establish production standards for school buses, including a standard exterior color. The color which became known as "school bus yellow" was selected because black lettering on that specific hue was easiest to see in the semi-darkness of early morning and late afternoon. Officially, school bus yellow was designated "National School Bus Chrome"; following the removal of lead from the pigment, it was renamed "National School Bus Glossy Yellow".
Thanks. I did not know that. I had a feeling there was at sometime an official adopted color for school buses, but I did not know the story. In fact, I think that prior to that time, there was red and even blue school buses.
Rural mailboxes were once limited to rural areas. Some Americans once had mail slots in their front doors just like the UK. However, the US postal service now mandates the use of rural boxes pretty much everywhere. This is to save the mail carriers from having to walk the additional steps. That is the real reason why these boxes are now so common.
I had a slot that went into my front closet when I first bought my house in Minneapolis in the 90's, but when I changed the siding, I had it covered to avoid potential insect problems. I've had wasps and yellow jackets near there before and would hate to give them easy access to my house.
That's for new construction. They build a neighborhood and put in the pultiple address boxes. USPS can't change delivery method unless residents agree.
There are also mailboxes attached to the house. My Mom had one because it became difficult for her to walk to the mailbox at her age and she had to use a walker and wasn’t able to cross the street to her old mailbox. Her letter carrier (mail man) suggested she contact the post office and request a mailbox on her home. The mailman just drove up her driveway and delivered the mail.
Absolutely! I've never even stopped to consider that things like that were exclusive to or mainly known as things only in the U. S. Never considered that different countries have school buses that were not yellow. Anywhere you go in the US, even if you're me in town, you know that you put your kids on the yellow bus that comes by/near your house. Mailbox at the road I've known all my life everywhere I've lived except an apartment complex in the 90's, we had a big metal box, (at the parking lot/car park) that had 10 -20 small square boxes & each apartment number on each small box you open with a key. The mail carrier had access to the back of it with a single key & big door that opened up and they sorted the mail there by apartment # in each slot/box. I figured every country flew their respective flags in rural areas anyway, never had a house with a picket fence, so I've never thought much about that one. Had several with chain link fence in front & privacy fence in back yard/garden (tall wooden) these are very interesting 🤔 oh! And I thought that literally EVERYONE in the UK had a literal "garden" in their yard (garden where you grow flowers, herbs, fruits, vegetables...) Never thought of a garden as just the property around the house with grass only! I would love to visit UK someday.. every picture I've ever seen is breathtakingly beautiful with lush green lands and beautiful cottage style homes with thatch roofs and all the hundreds & some even thousand + year old structures.. churches, Tudor & victorian homes cobblestone streets.. etc... ❤️
The state of Vermont, where I live, banned billboards along highways in 1968. As a result, we have some of the most scenic and beautiful highways, with nothing to distract you but the views.
Funny billboard story: While making the movie UHF (starring Weird Al Yankovic) they needed a shot of a billboard for a fictional store called Spatula World, so the rented one for a short period of time and apparently after the time was up it went un-rented for while so it was left up and the billboard company got complaints from people looking for Spatula World.
Spatula CIty......Spatula City.....We have spatulas for all your spatula needs, Dads,Grads , Wedding gitfs, and remember nothing says "I love you" more than a spatula. Sorry i LOVE that movie!!!
Yellow school buses are due safety. As a driver, you cannot miss seeing a school bus. There are several driving laws in regards to school buses. It's also a big step for 5 year old going to kindergarten to be a 'big boy or big girl' going on the school bus for the first time, however in high school (about 15 or 16) you do anything to get a ride to high school and avoid that bus. 🤣 One thing I found in common from Lawrence is the popular kids sitting in the back of the bus - same is true in the US!
It also highlights that they are school buses, rather than any other kind and as a result, when they deploy their stop signs across all lanes of traffic it provides for a reasonably safe space for students who need to change to the other side of the road can do so. And so American police can find and issue enormous fines to drivers who dare pass the extended signs.
The school bus thing reminds me of when I moved out west and saw tumbleweed for the first time. I also did not think it was a real thing until I saw them rolling by 😅
The mailboxes that are in the front yard, are commonly founded in more rural parts of the US. Mailboxes in towns are usually attached to the house, but next to the door closest to the road. In apartments in cities, they're usually in a joined mail box, but separated by apartment number, or letter.
My previous home was built around 1900, it had a brass letter slot in the front door. The downside is that my dog would sometimes rip the mail. The advantages to the USA classic mailbox are large capacity, can hold small packages, and when installed next to the street the postman can deliver while inside their van increasing the speed of delivery while reducing the effort of their work. Fire hydrants are usually red or yellow. School buses are common due to the spread out housing in the USA, especially in rural communities.
Back in 1976 during our Bicentennial celebration in the hometown, the city commissioned young artists to paint all the fire hydrants into characters. Focused on the celebration, they painted each one a different character. As a 19-year-old kid, I was fascinated with the different characters on the fire hydrants.
The red fire hydrant is the iconic color in the US but I have seen yellow, white, and black fire hydrants. Also it’s illegal to take someone else’s mail or intentionally damage a mailbox you can be fined or jailed if caught plus now a days you can place little cameras on or near your mailbox that connect to your phone so if someone does take it you can report them easily cause even though everyone knows it’s illegal there are still exceptions 😅
The drawback for a mailbox separate from the house is that sometimes it rains all day and you do not want to go out to fetch mail getting yourself and your mail all wet.
Thankfully mine is out next to my garage so it's both not a long walk and a walk where I can stand under the overhang of the garage roof so I don't get wet.
The tops and caps of fire hydrants usually are color coded to reflect the max GPM (Gallons per minute) that the hydrant will provide. That way the engineer of any fire truck hooking up to it knows how much water he will get from the hydrant. Edit: also hydrants are usually of two types, wet or dry. The wet ones are the ones you see put out the thirty foot geyser of water when one gets taken out in a movie car chase. The water is always all the way to the top and the valve that opens it is in the hydrant itself. But on a cold climate a wet hydrant can freeze solid and crack. Dry ones are usually used in colder climates. The water valve is usually at the base about three meters below street level. The standpipe has no water in it so it stays warmer and is much less likely to freeze. The shapes can and usually are slightly different
Interesting, learned something new. Lived in MN my whole life and didn't know wet barrel hydrants were a thing, I thought they all looked like the dry barrel ones.
in 1976, the start of the US, we could decorate the red fire hydrants to celebrate. I had one in front of my house in Houston, painted it like a little man with a blue collar and arms
I am from Houston and I swear everyone painted hydrants to look like Continental Army soldiers. Every single one in the burbs was decorated. But not in Jersey Village, because that was a police state and still is.
I’ve never had an issue with mail stolen. Packages, yes. America is huge and there is far more rural than urban. A post driver simply can’t go up to every door. Some people in rural areas will walk a distance down their driveway to a mailbox on the main road to get their mail. My daughter has to walk to the end of her street where there are a set of mailboxes for the neighborhood (everyone has their own number). This is to simplify delivery over a huge area. The USA is massive.
I HAVE had issues with mail being stolen. So I have installed an "insert" in the mail box such that a key is required to remove the mail. Mailman doesn't always get the mail into the "protected" slot but it helps. Agree with others, mailboxes are more in rural areas than in urban areas. Would not be surprised that post office regulations are causing more of the street type mailboxes in new housing to reduce the manpower needed to deliver mail by walking up to each front door.
some mailboxes lock and some dont! I would say most don't, particularly when it's just a single one, but sometimes there will be multiple that are all part of one structure like little lockers for each house and those usually require a key to open
Billboards along highways used to be a lot worse before Lady Bird Johnson (President Johnson’s wife) started a beautification program to get rid of a lot of the billboards. As for fire hydrants, in rural areas of America, a lot rural fire companies carry pumps that can draw water from creeks and farm ponds to provide water since the classic red fire hydrants don’t exist in farmland.
School buses in the U.S., and also Canada, are painted a distinct yellow color because they are easier to see on the road, and especially during in-climate weather. Over the past couple of decades, the roofs of the yellow school buses have been painted white to reflect the sunlight, thus a cooler bus. School buses are not air conditioned. When the red lights come on, vehicle traffic must stop both behind the bus and in front in the opposing lanes. At a bus stop, many buses have a long arm that comes down along the front right side of the bus to keep children from exiting the bus and walking in front of the bus to cross the road where the driver can't see them. And the interior military green color and the dark green seats are about the same as they were in the 1950s with very basic comfort. Seatbelts are optional based on state/county laws or the policy of the school board. The same with GPS tracking devices. Basic transportation...but they always get the kids to school or home on time.
When I lived on Loring AFB, Maine, we had the slot in the door for our mail. My mother-in-law has a mailbox on her front porch. I have a mailbox (tube-like) that is surrounded by rocks with a planter attached to the side. My parents live out in the country, their tube-like mailbox on a 4x4 post was replaced with a heavy duty metal mailbox on a metal pole based in a tire rim & cement. (Some people do steal from mailboxes. Some people like to drive by and hit mailboxes with baseball bats-which is why my parents replaced their original mailbox.)
One thing he did not touch on about mailboxes is that the mailbox itself belongs to United States Postal Service. If damaged you have to replace your own mailbox with your own money even though you don't technically own your mailbox. There are some funny shaped mailboxes in the US and one of the mailboxes I saw was shaped and painted like a salmon.
@@ZedrikVonKatmahl if you look at your mailbox itself it says property of the United States Postal Service. You don't own the mailbox. You own the support it sits on and the land it sits on but not the box itself. Only USPS are allowed to put mail that is being delivered to you in the Mailbox. You can put out going mail but UPS, FedEx, or any other companies that deliver mail are not allowed to put anything in the mailbox even if that's where you specified for them to put it.
@@sadiekincaid5310 My mailbox says no such thing I own my mailbox, by setting my mailbox for use, the US government and I have a contractual agreement (similar to a lease) that the US government will treat it as federal jurisdiction, but it's still my mailbox
The Fire hydrants in our neighborhood are now yellow, so they fit in better but are still easy to spot by the Fire Dept. We have a mailbox in front of our yard, but in my brother's neighborhood in TX they have a large rectangular metal box on a pedestal that has individual mailboxes, and each resident has to use a key to open their mail box. Depending on the size of the neighborhood, there are multiple numbers of these boxes, each covering a street or two.
Most of these items are seen in Canada too. Steel water towers are being phased out in many places; the one in Lethbridge, Alberta was converted into a restaurant.
@@djmac6088 - Right. Red fire hydrants exist here in Denmark too, looking almost identical to the American ones (based on the picture shown in the video).
Here in America, we usually have wall mounted mailboxes in the towns and cities. The mailboxes on posts are mainly found on the curbs of houses and businesses at the end of the driveway (sometimes the other side of the rod because it depends on which way the mailman comes from in their mail truck) that are out on the outskirts, suburbs and out in the country side. In cities and towns, the mail people usually walk to deliver mail. When you start leaving town, the are usually driving routes which is why we have mailboxes on the curb,
When I was a kid we had a silver fire hydrant in front of our house, not sure why it wasnt red but the fire chief lived across the street from us and every summer he would bring the fire truck home and open the hydrant valves up and let the water spray out... he would let all the neighborhood kids play in the water, he was a really cool fireman and I alway found it funny that his name was Mr. Tapp. 😃
Theft from mailboxes is pretty rare in the U.S. but it does occasionally happen. You can get mailboxes that allow the mail carrier to deliver letters, even small packages, which can be opened only with a key to ensure only the owner can take anything away. There are even explosion-resistant mailboxes-because it is an occasional teenage prank to put a small firework flash-bang into a mailbox to try to blow it up...
A red fire hydrant is red so the firemen can find them in the snow! They do turn them on to check if they work in the summer. Then, let kids play in the water.🥰 My sister is on one of the special Ed yellow busses she loves it! She says it's the best job she has ever had
Actually the colors on the caps usually will vary depending on the max flow rate of that hydrant can provide. The engineer on the fire truck then knows how much and how quickly he can get water
We have a white plastic sort of fence between us and neighbors, and on the other two sides of the back yard we have chain fence. Part of the reason for that is to not break up the scenery. We have a farm behind us, and it's beautiful in the growing seasons, and covered in snow in the winter. The side one is because it faces the road, and our dogs love kids. The second reason for the cheap fencing is so the dogs can see things without escaping. A bonus for our area is that if you don't fence, someone on your property is just trespassing. If they hop a fence, it automatically becomes burglary if the owner wants to push the issue.
Billboard signs on the side of the road are not distracting. You don't even notice or care about them. The only time they come in handy is when you see an advertisement for a destination you are going to so you know you are getting close.
Beesleys, in case your curiosity is driving you up the wall, the water tower for a city called Elkhart (EL-cart) is located in Indiana. In order to qualify for riding the school bus, you have to live at least a minimum distance away from the school. Picket fences used to be made with wood, but now it's switched to plastic, which saves on the number of trees taken down. The mesh fences are called cyclone fences. What you have to receive your mail depends upon the type of home you have. It could be a slot, a mailbox on the outside wall, or a slot out by the street, depending upon whether it's a walking route, or a driving one. Fire extinguishers are red in many places, but there are just as many which are yellow. Yes, we are patriotic, but there are also many businesses, usually of a local, state or national variety, which are mandated to fly the flag every business day, which makes up a significant percentage of the flags.
Yep, we in the US love our Stars & Stripes aka The American Flag. In Gastonia, North Carolina, which is around 20 miles West of Charlotte, the largest city in North Carolina, the town of Gastonia has laid calm to the largest flying American flag, the flag is 114 feet (35 meters) wide by 65 feet (20 meters) tall, totaling 7,410 square feet (688 square meters), that's just over 6 times the square feet of the house I live in...
Yep, all of these are just common everyday things here, and have been for many decades. I’m all for getting rid of the billboards, plenty of other ways to advertise.
"Even educated fleas do it ", he may just be referring to an old Cole Porter song, I choose to believe he is reminding us of Tank Girl, an unsung bada** of American lore.
Most new neighborhoods build now have a central location for the mail. We have a mailbox at the road that flaps open. You can buy ones that lock. My house growing up our postman had to walk the neighborhood because the mailbox was on the house.
I have seen billboards in other countries besides the USA. In the USA they aren’t always ads. My friend wishes his wife a happy birthday on one every year. Sometimes they congratulate sports teams, graduates and such
As a water operator in a rural town the towers that are used are one of a few forms of water storage options used here. The tower is dual purpose in use. #1 is for storage. The water is pumped up into the "Bowl" for use as people need it throughout the day. #2 is to create pressure in the main line/distribution system and into the home for consumer use. Depending on the height of the tower as to how much pressure is being released coming out and through the distribution system. My tower is 175 ft tall and we normally have between 65 to 70 psi in our distribution lines. Also as we are a small town of roughly 200 people we have a 50,000 gallon storage bowl in our tower which is more than adequate for a days use for the number of people.
Rarely some people have mail slot on the doors like Britain and only in apartments our mailbox is locked. Many of these differences is because the u.s. have such large country when it comes to school buses and mailboxes at postman just drives up to
Because we generally have large front yards, some have long driveways leading from the road to the house front. Interestingly, our mail trucks are made with right hand drive because they can drive down the road and deliver mail to mailboxes without getting out of the driver's seat.
The water towers are to provide a static, or pressure head for the town water pumps suction side. They keep the pumps from cavitating. Used in areas where water is sucked up from a well.
Urban areas have letter slots on the doors, or boxes attached near the door. Rural areas have the stand alone boxes, or sometimes community boxes attached together on a corner. Rural routes are driven, not walked.
I was scrolling to see whether anyone else would mention Burma Shave... Although I am only 53 and didn't come to the States until 1976 , I always loved the concept of Route 66 and the Burma Shave signs along highways .... perhaps someday I will get to drive Route 66 although that isn't likely to happen until the last vacation is paid off, during which vacation we were on a Symphony of the Seas Transatlantic cruise and one thing that I noticed while on the walking track on the ship was that they actually had two Burma Shave style rhymes as you walked around the track... I likely drove my husband crazy as I would read the signs aloud and everytime I got to the end of the rhyme I would happily say Burma Shave 😂
@kamthornhill477 awww. Neat story! I didn't know about them until I moved from Michigan to California at 13 yrs. Old in 1981, I actually remember seeing them along the highway, I do think it was a fun smart way to advertise!
Billboards aren’t legal in some states, so it’s not everywhere. We have tons of them in California, and now some are screens so they’re really distracting at night.
Mail boxes are prevalent in rural settings so the postman doesn’t have to get out of his vehicle. Yes, everyone and their dog can access it. This is another reason why many people have gone to direct deposit of checks. It goes to the bank and not to the mailbox. You can have your medicines delivered but not if they are narcotics, neither will they deliver diabetic needles.I am home bound and have all my meds delivered. If for some reason I need a narcotic for pain I must get it at the pharmacy. Luckily I haven’t needed any in about five years since my last surgery. Also being rural you may accidentally get your neighbors mail and you can just pop it in their box as you go by.
The mailboxes are different depending on your neighborhood. You can have those boxes on the posts next to the the road or a little box on your house, usually right next to your front door. Most where I live have the latter, but in the house I grew up in we had the former. The postman, or mailman, as we more commonly refer to them (postman is more old fashioned but still very recognized) would park at the end of the street and walk up and down putting the mail in the boxes on the front of your house. For the ones on the street they have these cars with no doors and a right hand drive like you'd see in Britain and they just go driving slowly down the street inserting the mail to each box.
Water towers are common in areas where you have town water instead of wells, they pump water up to the tower and then if the power goes out it can gravity feed the water supply until it runs out. It also makes a sort of water buffer for high usage times, like say half the town comes home and wants a shower at 7PM it helps maintain the pressure without having to run a bunch of pumps.
Types of mailboxes differ from neighborhood to neighborhood. When I was a little girl, our mailbox was attached to the front of the house. We moved when I was 10, and the mailbox was at the road.
In NYC when its super hot in the summer they used to open a few hydrants up for kids to play in... Before hydrants were fireplugs, Also a short stout man might be described as a fireplug.
Also of note, most "mail trucks" (the tiny one the Postman drives) are right hand drive so that they can reach the mail box without exiting the vehicle.
I just bought a locking mailbox but have not had it installed yet. In recent years the problem of mail theft has become a real problem. The locking box has a pull open slot for the mailman to drop in the mail, but I have the key to open the back to retrieve the mail.
Water towers are real and prevalent in smaller towns. The yellow school buses have different rules than other buses. You must stop when the yellow ones stop if you are next to or behind the bus, on either side of the road. (Unless there is a median). You do not have to stop for regular, city-run buses unless you are directly behind it.
School buses are always yellow, but fire hydrants do not have a standard color. I see yellow hydrants more often around here. My house (modest, suburban ranch style) has an alarm system with motion detectors. A mail slot in the door could trigger the sensors and set off the alarm.
Converting buses into living spaces is very popular here. Some people buy cross country buses (Greyhound etc ) but a lot of people buy skoolies (school buses). It is illegal to keep them yellow..they have to change the color of them if they are going to take them on the road. 😊
Billboards are not as distracting as he describes. I have driven cross country and commuted long distances on highways for many years and rarely does an accident ever happen. I use my peripheral vision when reading billboards and get along just fine.
For the mail deal many have mentioned the steep penalties, but really there is little reason to steal mail anymore. Fire hydrants pretty much have the similar shapes but can have other colors. In neighboring town they use silver and green.
@@btnhstillfire that’s my point too. I get maybe 2 items that are junk mail and neither are worth stealing. I don’t even get bills by mail anymore. Email, text alerts and banking apps allows people to go paperless.
I believe the fire hydrants are painted red and made very visible so people don’t accidentally block them when parking their cars. That hinders the fire fighters. The hydrant is usually connected to the fire truck which has multiple hoses. If there’s a car between the hydrant and the truck it makes connecting them more difficult
In the city NY Boston Pittsburgh--- the mail box is attached to the house at the front door at the front door. Some house have mail slot in the door. But in the burbs we use mailbox’s at the end of the driveway. The postman drives a vehicle with the steering wheel on the right side so the can deliver from the vehicle.
You can get locking mailboxes. In the previous place I lived, there was a door on the box where you could put letters in, but it was a one way door since the letters would only slide down into the compartment when you close it. Thus, you could not reach in and get stuff through that door. There was a lower door below it that was locked, that if I wanted the mail I would have to go out there with my mail key and unlock the box.
If you ever get the chance to go to a Perkins for breakfast, you’ll notice they usually fly some of the most massive American flags around! Usually they’ll be like 20 feet by 30 feet.
Fire hydrant bases are often painted red, but not always. Most places have red, yellow, green, or blue caps depending on how high the flow rate should be.
As for mail boxes by the road, many rural houses have long driveways. The boxes are on the right side of the road and the rural carrier either has a right hand drive vehicle or has an extra set of peddles on the right. They can pull up to the box and without getting out, place the mail in the box. There are also "arms" or "flags" on the side of the mailbox that you move to the vertical position if you have outgoing mail. In more built up communities, there is sometimes a main box with the number of smaller boxes needed for that community. These usually have locks, whose keys have a master key carried by the letter carrier. I had a main box like that when I lived in an apartment. Each stairwell had a mailbox for those occupants. And now the part he didn't mention... The rural mailbox was a target for young miscreants with a baseball bat. The passenger would hang out the window and bang the mailbox as they drove by. This action was usually proceeded by the consumption of alkeyhaul. At least in my time it was alkeyhaul, although I never banged a mailbox.
Mailbox Hockey. There's a family down the road from my SIL who have their mailbox enclosed in a cage. My SIL has a double one--a great big one, some "Great Stuff" spray foam, then the "real" mailbox inside. Both systems have stood the test of time--and bored teen-age vandals.
@@Cricket2731 We got ours banged enough times, my brother welded one in shop class. He used 1/8 inch steel plate, had a bolt latch on the front, and it was mounted on a wood 6"x6" with steel plates on the side with our numbers cut out. I wonder if it is still there... It was the last time I lived there and that was 1981. 😉 Back 20 couple years ago, when I was a Dep Sheriff, the "kids" were using Drano bombs. Easy to get ingredients, unknown time from mix to boom, and left a hazmat residue. Blow a standard mailbox all to hell.
Yellow school buses are also here in Canada. They are great. Stand out. And a lot of fun on bumpy roads if you sit at the back. Also here we have many types of ways people get their mail. My self we have a box on the wall next to front door and most aro7nd here do. The countryside out outskirts some still use the end of the road mailboxes. The ones with the little flag and hatch. Like a sideways breadbox on a stick. Our fire hydrants are yellow.
We have a bus line (like an airline, but buses) over here called "Grayhound" with a grayhound dog in the logo. Here in East Texas (at least, maybe other places) we had a slang term for School buses: "yellow dog", as in "We're gonna yellow dog it to the ball game." which would mean the team was being transported on a school bus rather than, say, a chartered bus like the ones Grayhound drives.
Home delivery of U.S. mail started during civil war. People would swamp the local post office for letters from soldiers and other information. So they decided to deliver mail daily to help people and stop daily trips to post office. Fire hydrants are different colors to define the type. Regular is red and high pressure I believe are yellow. There are also different types made for frost or no frost areas. There are hydrants that allow water to be taken from lakes and streams and need to be pumped only.
In the town it's self the house may have a bail box on the house by the door. However outside of town the mailboxes are on poles or bricks on the road. The fire hydrants are different colors in different places. usually red or yellow but here in South Carolina they are BLUE!
One of things we used to do while traveling in the 50s and 60s was to play an alphabet game - finding words using the first letter of the words in alphabetical order (we had to pronounce the word to use it). It wasn't until I was much older that I realized that my parents were using the time for us to learn vocabulary. School during vacation.
Mailboxes in the U. S.: The mailboxes on posts - I've mostly seen them in rural areas or sparsely populated areas. Mailboxes on wall outside front door are seen everywhere. At apartment buildings or complexes, you'll sometimes find a set of rows of mailboxes. Usually, you'll see units of locked metal file-like boxes which can be either outside or in a common area. I have never seen a mail slot on a door, but they probably exist. Theft is a common issue, especially packages.
Post WW2 housing booms mail was delivered to mailbox on front of house or garage. Carriers walking to each house on strict schedule was a cause of 'going postal.' Also theft of rose with rate of crime. A community box was added when a number of box numbers reside.
In North America we're the same way about double-decker buses as British are about school buses. We never see them in life. The first time I ever saw an actual double-decker bus, and rode on it, was in Victoria BC when on a tour of Buchart Gardens.
The school busses here are painted yellow for safety. Yellow stands out more than other color, (except for fire engine red, which is for firetrucks). It is also the color on traffic lights between green and red, which signals "prepare to stop." So it probably makes people automatically more cautious.
LIving in a small US town of approx. 300 people, we don't have home delivery. UPS and FED-EX deliver but to get our regular mail, we have a locked box in the post office. However, those who live out of town have those mailboxes and some have a mile or more drive to the main road, where their mailbox is, often in a group with others, for delivery convenience.
The city has mailmen walking, because the houses are close together. Out in the suburbs or country they have the trucks. I have a friend where their mailbox is on a rope. Her driveway is long, steep, and windy. You have to drive 1 mile (1.6 km) to get to her front door. When there's a snow storm or an ice storm she can't get out of her driveway. A mailbox on a pully system is how she gets her mail during these times. The city has the city streets plowed and/or salted. The city doesn't plow and/or salt private driveways.
American English has 44 phonemes (sounds - many for "a") whereas UK English has 37. As a result, a weird correlation is that there are less incidents of dyslexia. This detail continues in countries where there are fewer phonemes.
My city of 100k in MASS has their own water system. We have 4 reservoirs with 3 large water tanks that fill after getting treated in our water treatment plant. There are 200psi water mains that run through our city as part of MASS water resource administration MWRA. MWRA is the main source of treated water for most of MASS. Lynn takes pride in our water and sewer system
I remember when I was a kid there was a competition painting fire hydrants in various patriotic red, white, and blue designs for the 1976 bicentennial celebration. I don't know if this was only in Southern California or if they did it elsewhere as well. It made for some beautiful hydrants until the city came along and repainted them back to boring yellow.
A long time ago I was a substitute rural letter carrier. It was in a the rule area and was 43 miles. We drove right hand drive postal vehicles and the boxes were by the street so you didn't get out of the vehicle. We truly were like a traveling mail office i.e. selling stamps, money orders etc...The house I have now does have a slot for the mail on the house (not the door) but we have a mailbox on the side. The slot is just to small for all the "junk" mail you get.
Mailboxes generally aren't locked, but if you receive a lot of packages or checks in the mail for example, you can always invest in a lock box for more security. As far as fire hydrants go, here's a fun fact. Many people don't realize that they are also marked by blue reflective "box dots" on the road so that firemen can find them quickly.
As several have said, stealing mail is a federal offense. It is possible to get lockable mailboxes where the mailman slides the mail into a slot and the owner can use a key to retrieve it.
No one on my street has a mailbox. We all have letter slots in the door - I think it's because of olde timey codes. Also, the city owns the strip between the sidewalk and the road so the mail carrier would have to get out to deliver anyway. It's strange, though, because I've always had a mailbox until I moved to where I live now. Small town, Norther New York.
I work at a water treatment plant. We push water from the plant, through the pipes underground, and it fills the water towers, the towers then push water to the homes across the city. The reason why the water goes to the towers first and then houses, is to have extra storage so that way if the plant malfunctions and we can't supply water for a time, then civilians can still use water thanks to the extra storage provided by the water tanks we fill up.
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Putting the town name on water towers, started in the early days of aviation. Pilots would get lost sometimes, so they would look for a town, fly low, look to see the name of the town, and then look at the map to see where they were.
US Mailboxes are placed on the road so that the mail carriers can drive from one box to another and put the mail in and keep on going. It would take them forever to have to drive up long driveways as are common in more rural areas. A mail carrier push his mail cart (trolley?) down the sidewalk also saves a lot of time by not having to walk up to each door. It's simply for efficiency.
Not so much anymore thanks to Mailbox baseball.
And the mail trucks are the only type of vehicle in which the driver is on the right side. Therefore, the driver does not to have to reach across to the window.
As for security, it is a Serious crime to interfere with the mail and they have a very excellent record for prosecution of offenses.
I delivered 17 years in San Jose, CA. Suburban area, single family homes. Walking route, almost 500 houses. Mail Boxes were near the front door of each house.
My mailbox is on the wall of my house next to the front door. I can just lean out and get my mail. I live in a suburb of Minneapolis. My mail carrier walks from house to house. In the winter I shovel a path across the yard for him so he doesn’t have to slog through deep snow or take the long way out to the street and up my driveway. Some people have mailboxes that are locked, the mail goes in a slot at the front but you need a key to open the top to retrieve it. My brother lives in another suburb and he has a mailbox at the curb, as does everyone else in the neighborhood. It seems that a neighborhood is either one or the other. I think older neighborhoods, like mine, have the mailboxes on the house.
City people have mailmen bring their mail to the house on foot, cause the houses are so close together. Rural areas usually have the mailbox out by the road, so the mailman can drive from one box to another.
I'd say that's a little oversimplified and inaccurate. I guess I would say that the farther you are from the center of a city, the farther your mail box tends to be from the home.
When we really lived IN the city, the mailbox was on the wall next to the door. My parents still live in the city, but they're now so far from the center of it all that the mailbox is actually across the street. 🤣
I have also seen mailboxes at the end of the road so you might actually have to walk for 10 or 15 minutes or drive to get your mail. In real rural areas the mailbox can be over a mile or more than 2km from the actual front door of the house. So Lawrence has still stay close to the city.
Springfield Ma has areas of mailbox 📬 just a couple of feet behind the curb.
To add to that, in the US our mailboxes come with a red flag on it. This way you can send mail out as well. You just raise the flag to notify the mailman you got mail to send.
"Why doesn't somebody come by and pull it out"? Because here in America, it's a federal offense....
And most people arent douches 😂
Criminals don't care about federal offenses. Mail is stolen all the time.
Plus we have something to threaten people with other than butter knives. :)
@@cobbler88 yeah as a NRA member and cc you can't shoot someone for stealing your mail, unless you drag them in the house 😂
@@joeyjohnson4826 I've managed to go 52 years without getting a tattoo, but I HAVE pondered getting one that reads, "I feared for my life, and the lives of my family." 🤣
In the U.S., taking someones mail is a federal crime which can lead to huge fines (quarter of a million) and more than a decade in federal prison.... per offense.
Where "per offense" means PER ITEM OF MAIL - any 3 pieces of mail? $750k
@@jtzutube I believe it varies by which state the act occurs in, some might be by number of items stolen or it might be by number of mailboxes stolen from. And if I am not mistaken, the law applies to those who steal mail as well as those who receive stolen mail or who benefit from the mail theft.
Recently a string of mail thefts in my hometown have gone uninvestigated. The town police have been notified and the county sheriff as well as the local postmaster.
@@gabriellareid3883 Federal law not state law
@@gabriellareid3883 States may have additional charges, but they're talking federal charges from the post office.
There are yellow school buses in Canada as well. It's common knowledge that going into someone else's mailbox if a felony and you may go to prison.
A felony is a state offense. Any crime involving mail is federal offense.
@@the_dog_says_moo Federal offenses still fall into Felony and misdemeanors. Federal Felonys have five classes A,B,C,D,E with A being the worst. Misdemeanors are less then 1 year in prison.
Stealing any mail is a Federal misdemeanor, with up to 1 year in prison. Stealing leading to defraud, steal property/identity, and or put addressee in any duress is a Federal Felony.
@@Loki_Trickster Which class did they get you on?
@@edwardmclaughlin719 I've had a couple family member charged with Mail fraud and id theft for stealing from other family members and an elderly community. They are now serving 25 yrs. On a class A Federal Felony
@@the_dog_says_moo Felony just means above a misdemeanor. They can be both state or federal involving more than a year of jail. Different degrees of felonies too.
Yellow was adopted as the standard color for North American school buses in 1939. In April of that year, rural education specialist Frank W. Cyr organized a national conference at Columbia University to establish production standards for school buses, including a standard exterior color. The color which became known as "school bus yellow" was selected because black lettering on that specific hue was easiest to see in the semi-darkness of early morning and late afternoon. Officially, school bus yellow was designated "National School Bus Chrome"; following the removal of lead from the pigment, it was renamed "National School Bus Glossy Yellow".
Thanks. I did not know that. I had a feeling there was at sometime an official adopted color for school buses, but I did not know the story. In fact, I think that prior to that time, there was red and even blue school buses.
I see yellow with public school buses but many times I have seen private school buses are school colors.
..and ONLY school buses may be painted in that color. If someone buys a surplus bus, they must have it repainted before taking ownership.
...and the black lines (placement), actually have meanings. They are a safety device for rescue efforts.
@@WhatDayIsItTrumpDay v
Rural mailboxes were once limited to rural areas. Some Americans once had mail slots in their front doors just like the UK. However, the US postal service now mandates the use of rural boxes pretty much everywhere. This is to save the mail carriers from having to walk the additional steps. That is the real reason why these boxes are now so common.
You still see mail slots in older Victorian style homes, especially in older places on the east coast.
I had a slot that went into my front closet when I first bought my house in Minneapolis in the 90's, but when I changed the siding, I had it covered to avoid potential insect problems. I've had wasps and yellow jackets near there before and would hate to give them easy access to my house.
That's for new construction. They build a neighborhood and put in the pultiple address boxes. USPS can't change delivery method unless residents agree.
There are also mailboxes attached to the house. My Mom had one because it became difficult for her to walk to the mailbox at her age and she had to use a walker and wasn’t able to cross the street to her old mailbox. Her letter carrier (mail man) suggested she contact the post office and request a mailbox on her home. The mailman just drove up her driveway and delivered the mail.
There's no such mandate...my last 2 houses both had a mailbox next to the garage door.
It’s amazing how many things I take for granted as an American, until I watch the Beesleys or Lawrence videos.
We sure take Tumbleweeds for granted. 😅😅
Absolutely! I've never even stopped to consider that things like that were exclusive to or mainly known as things only in the U. S. Never considered that different countries have school buses that were not yellow. Anywhere you go in the US, even if you're me in town, you know that you put your kids on the yellow bus that comes by/near your house. Mailbox at the road I've known all my life everywhere I've lived except an apartment complex in the 90's, we had a big metal box, (at the parking lot/car park) that had 10 -20 small square boxes & each apartment number on each small box you open with a key. The mail carrier had access to the back of it with a single key & big door that opened up and they sorted the mail there by apartment # in each slot/box.
I figured every country flew their respective flags in rural areas anyway, never had a house with a picket fence, so I've never thought much about that one. Had several with chain link fence in front & privacy fence in back yard/garden (tall wooden) these are very interesting 🤔 oh! And I thought that literally EVERYONE in the UK had a literal "garden" in their yard (garden where you grow flowers, herbs, fruits, vegetables...) Never thought of a garden as just the property around the house with grass only! I would love to visit UK someday.. every picture I've ever seen is breathtakingly beautiful with lush green lands and beautiful cottage style homes with thatch roofs and all the hundreds & some even thousand + year old structures.. churches, Tudor & victorian homes cobblestone streets.. etc... ❤️
The state of Vermont, where I live, banned billboards along highways in 1968. As a result, we have some of the most scenic and beautiful highways, with nothing to distract you but the views.
You have a beautiful state!!!
Funny billboard story: While making the movie UHF (starring Weird Al Yankovic) they needed a shot of a billboard for a fictional store called Spatula World, so the rented one for a short period of time and apparently after the time was up it went un-rented for while so it was left up and the billboard company got complaints from people looking for Spatula World.
Spatula CIty......Spatula City.....We have spatulas for all your spatula needs, Dads,Grads , Wedding gitfs, and remember nothing says "I love you" more than a spatula. Sorry i LOVE that movie!!!
Lawrence showed a pic of a "mesh fence' People I know call them 'chain-link' fences.
Yeah, that was a chain-link fence
A mesh fence is just horizontal and vertical wires making rectangles
My dad was a letter carrier for the US Postal Service. His patrons knew him as Mr. Bill, and he was much loved by those patrons.
Yellow school buses are due safety. As a driver, you cannot miss seeing a school bus. There are several driving laws in regards to school buses. It's also a big step for 5 year old going to kindergarten to be a 'big boy or big girl' going on the school bus for the first time, however in high school (about 15 or 16) you do anything to get a ride to high school and avoid that bus. 🤣 One thing I found in common from Lawrence is the popular kids sitting in the back of the bus - same is true in the US!
It also highlights that they are school buses, rather than any other kind and as a result, when they deploy their stop signs across all lanes of traffic it provides for a reasonably safe space for students who need to change to the other side of the road can do so. And so American police can find and issue enormous fines to drivers who dare pass the extended signs.
@AL to be fair every one of the bullies sitting in the back thought they were popular.
The school bus thing reminds me of when I moved out west and saw tumbleweed for the first time. I also did not think it was a real thing until I saw them rolling by 😅
My friend had German exchange students at his high school and they were amazed tumbleweeds were real! They thought it was a prank at first! 😂
The wildest part is Tumbleweeds are an invasive species from Russia. See CGP Grey
ditto!
LoL I even saw Tumble weeds here in California. 😅😅
Tumbleweeds are native to Kazakhstan and Russia. Not sure why anyone imported them. Similar story with Kudzu.
The mailboxes that are in the front yard, are commonly founded in more rural parts of the US.
Mailboxes in towns are usually attached to the house, but next to the door closest to the road.
In apartments in cities, they're usually in a joined mail box, but separated by apartment number, or letter.
My previous home was built around 1900, it had a brass letter slot in the front door. The downside is that my dog would sometimes rip the mail. The advantages to the USA classic mailbox are large capacity, can hold small packages, and when installed next to the street the postman can deliver while inside their van increasing the speed of delivery while reducing the effort of their work. Fire hydrants are usually red or yellow. School buses are common due to the spread out housing in the USA, especially in rural communities.
Back in 1976 during our Bicentennial celebration in the hometown, the city commissioned young artists to paint all the fire hydrants into characters. Focused on the celebration, they painted each one a different character. As a 19-year-old kid, I was fascinated with the different characters on the fire hydrants.
I remember seeing many hydrants painted with stars and stripes for the bicentennial
The red fire hydrant is the iconic color in the US but I have seen yellow, white, and black fire hydrants. Also it’s illegal to take someone else’s mail or intentionally damage a mailbox you can be fined or jailed if caught plus now a days you can place little cameras on or near your mailbox that connect to your phone so if someone does take it you can report them easily cause even though everyone knows it’s illegal there are still exceptions 😅
We have green ones.
We also have green ones.
In the fire service there is a cooler coating system for water flow and pressure some places don't do it some do in the us fire service
When I was a volunteer fire fighter, our fire hydrants were color coded, so you could quickly see which ones were on which water main.
I've seen blue ones
The drawback for a mailbox separate from the house is that sometimes it rains all day and you do not want to go out to fetch mail getting yourself and your mail all wet.
or snows or is just too cold. One nice perk of moving to the city was not having to leave the building to get my mail!
Especially when your driveway is a half mile long
Thankfully mine is out next to my garage so it's both not a long walk and a walk where I can stand under the overhang of the garage roof so I don't get wet.
Or the wind blows so hard the box’s door flys open and the mail gets wet.
The tops and caps of fire hydrants usually are color coded to reflect the max GPM (Gallons per minute) that the hydrant will provide.
That way the engineer of any fire truck hooking up to it knows how much water he will get from the hydrant.
Edit: also hydrants are usually of two types, wet or dry.
The wet ones are the ones you see put out the thirty foot geyser of water when one gets taken out in a movie car chase. The water is always all the way to the top and the valve that opens it is in the hydrant itself. But on a cold climate a wet hydrant can freeze solid and crack.
Dry ones are usually used in colder climates. The water valve is usually at the base about three meters below street level. The standpipe has no water in it so it stays warmer and is much less likely to freeze. The shapes can and usually are slightly different
Your third point is actually the definition of hydrant. I'm going out to put a U.S. flag on mine now that I've watched this.
Interesting and I learned something today. Thanks
In 1976 for our bicentennial our fire hydrants were painted red, white, and blue. It was really cool to see.
Interesting, learned something new. Lived in MN my whole life and didn't know wet barrel hydrants were a thing, I thought they all looked like the dry barrel ones.
@@xDarkTrinityx I was in Ventura CA a few tree ars back and they had the wet barrel ones and they just looked weird.
in 1976, the start of the US, we could decorate the red fire hydrants to celebrate. I had one in front of my house in Houston, painted it like a little man with a blue collar and arms
I am from Houston and I swear everyone painted hydrants to look like Continental Army soldiers. Every single one in the burbs was decorated. But not in Jersey Village, because that was a police state and still is.
I’ve never had an issue with mail stolen. Packages, yes. America is huge and there is far more rural than urban. A post driver simply can’t go up to every door. Some people in rural areas will walk a distance down their driveway to a mailbox on the main road to get their mail. My daughter has to walk to the end of her street where there are a set of mailboxes for the neighborhood (everyone has their own number). This is to simplify delivery over a huge area. The USA is massive.
I HAVE had issues with mail being stolen. So I have installed an "insert" in the mail box such that a key is required to remove the mail. Mailman doesn't always get the mail into the "protected" slot but it helps. Agree with others, mailboxes are more in rural areas than in urban areas. Would not be surprised that post office regulations are causing more of the street type mailboxes in new housing to reduce the manpower needed to deliver mail by walking up to each front door.
some mailboxes lock and some dont! I would say most don't, particularly when it's just a single one, but sometimes there will be multiple that are all part of one structure like little lockers for each house and those usually require a key to open
Billboards along highways used to be a lot worse before Lady Bird Johnson (President Johnson’s wife) started a beautification program to get rid of a lot of the billboards. As for fire hydrants, in rural areas of America, a lot rural fire companies carry pumps that can draw water from creeks and farm ponds to provide water since the classic red fire hydrants don’t exist in farmland.
I love living in one of the 4 US states where billboards are banned.
😊
School buses in the U.S., and also Canada, are painted a distinct yellow color because they are easier to see on the road, and especially during in-climate weather. Over the past couple of decades, the roofs of the yellow school buses have been painted white to reflect the sunlight, thus a cooler bus. School buses are not air conditioned. When the red lights come on, vehicle traffic must stop both behind the bus and in front in the opposing lanes. At a bus stop, many buses have a long arm that comes down along the front right side of the bus to keep children from exiting the bus and walking in front of the bus to cross the road where the driver can't see them. And the interior military green color and the dark green seats are about the same as they were in the 1950s with very basic comfort. Seatbelts are optional based on state/county laws or the policy of the school board. The same with GPS tracking devices. Basic transportation...but they always get the kids to school or home on time.
It’s a felony to steal another person’s mail
When I lived on Loring AFB, Maine, we had the slot in the door for our mail. My mother-in-law has a mailbox on her front porch. I have a mailbox (tube-like) that is surrounded by rocks with a planter attached to the side. My parents live out in the country, their tube-like mailbox on a 4x4 post was replaced with a heavy duty metal mailbox on a metal pole based in a tire rim & cement. (Some people do steal from mailboxes. Some people like to drive by and hit mailboxes with baseball bats-which is why my parents replaced their original mailbox.)
One thing he did not touch on about mailboxes is that the mailbox itself belongs to United States Postal Service. If damaged you have to replace your own mailbox with your own money even though you don't technically own your mailbox. There are some funny shaped mailboxes in the US and one of the mailboxes I saw was shaped and painted like a salmon.
Technically you own your mailbox but the USPS has sole jurisdiction over using it for mail from or to you
It's weird legal stuff
@@ZedrikVonKatmahl if you look at your mailbox itself it says property of the United States Postal Service. You don't own the mailbox. You own the support it sits on and the land it sits on but not the box itself. Only USPS are allowed to put mail that is being delivered to you in the Mailbox. You can put out going mail but UPS, FedEx, or any other companies that deliver mail are not allowed to put anything in the mailbox even if that's where you specified for them to put it.
@@sadiekincaid5310
My mailbox says no such thing
I own my mailbox, by setting my mailbox for use, the US government and I have a contractual agreement (similar to a lease) that the US government will treat it as federal jurisdiction, but it's still my mailbox
In the town I grew up in in southern California we had fire hydrants the same color as the school buses, kind of a yellowy orange.
The Fire hydrants in our neighborhood are now yellow, so they fit in better but are still easy to spot by the Fire Dept.
We have a mailbox in front of our yard, but in my brother's neighborhood in TX they have a large rectangular metal box on a pedestal that has individual mailboxes, and each resident has to use a key to open their mail box. Depending on the size of the neighborhood, there are multiple numbers of these boxes, each covering a street or two.
Ours are also yellow where I live.
Most of these items are seen in Canada too. Steel water towers are being phased out in many places; the one in Lethbridge, Alberta was converted into a restaurant.
I saw that when we were in Lethbridge to visit family. Yes most of this is not just the States.
@@djmac6088 - Right. Red fire hydrants exist here in Denmark too, looking almost identical to the American ones (based on the picture shown in the video).
Here in America, we usually have wall mounted mailboxes in the towns and cities. The mailboxes on posts are mainly found on the curbs of houses and businesses at the end of the driveway (sometimes the other side of the rod because it depends on which way the mailman comes from in their mail truck) that are out on the outskirts, suburbs and out in the country side. In cities and towns, the mail people usually walk to deliver mail. When you start leaving town, the are usually driving routes which is why we have mailboxes on the curb,
When I was a kid we had a silver fire hydrant in front of our house, not sure why it wasnt red but the fire chief lived across the street from us and every summer he would bring the fire truck home and open the hydrant valves up and let the water spray out... he would let all the neighborhood kids play in the water, he was a really cool fireman and I alway found it funny that his name was Mr. Tapp. 😃
Theft from mailboxes is pretty rare in the U.S. but it does occasionally happen. You can get mailboxes that allow the mail carrier to deliver letters, even small packages, which can be opened only with a key to ensure only the owner can take anything away. There are even explosion-resistant mailboxes-because it is an occasional teenage prank to put a small firework flash-bang into a mailbox to try to blow it up...
A red fire hydrant is red so the firemen can find them in the snow! They do turn them on to check if they work in the summer. Then, let kids play in the water.🥰 My sister is on one of the special Ed yellow busses she loves it! She says it's the best job she has ever had
Actually the colors on the caps usually will vary depending on the max flow rate of that hydrant can provide.
The engineer on the fire truck then knows how much and how quickly he can get water
A lot of time the water company turns of fire hydrants to flush the sediment out of the lines as well.
We have a yellow fire hydrant next door.
We have a white plastic sort of fence between us and neighbors, and on the other two sides of the back yard we have chain fence. Part of the reason for that is to not break up the scenery. We have a farm behind us, and it's beautiful in the growing seasons, and covered in snow in the winter. The side one is because it faces the road, and our dogs love kids. The second reason for the cheap fencing is so the dogs can see things without escaping. A bonus for our area is that if you don't fence, someone on your property is just trespassing. If they hop a fence, it automatically becomes burglary if the owner wants to push the issue.
I have a mailbox in the yard too. We do have problems with “porch pirates”, who follow delivery trucks an steal stuff off your porch.
Billboard signs on the side of the road are not distracting. You don't even notice or care about them. The only time they come in handy is when you see an advertisement for a destination you are going to so you know you are getting close.
Beesleys, in case your curiosity is driving you up the wall, the water tower for a city called Elkhart (EL-cart) is located in Indiana.
In order to qualify for riding the school bus, you have to live at least a minimum distance away from the school.
Picket fences used to be made with wood, but now it's switched to plastic, which saves on the number of trees taken down.
The mesh fences are called cyclone fences.
What you have to receive your mail depends upon the type of home you have. It could be a slot, a mailbox on the outside wall, or a slot out by the street, depending upon whether it's a walking route, or a driving one.
Fire extinguishers are red in many places, but there are just as many which are yellow.
Yes, we are patriotic, but there are also many businesses, usually of a local, state or national variety, which are mandated to fly the flag every business day, which makes up a significant percentage of the flags.
Yep, we in the US love our Stars & Stripes aka The American Flag. In Gastonia, North Carolina, which is around 20 miles West of Charlotte, the largest city in North Carolina, the town of Gastonia has laid calm to the largest flying American flag, the flag is 114 feet (35 meters) wide by 65 feet (20 meters) tall, totaling 7,410 square feet (688 square meters), that's just over 6 times the square feet of the house I live in...
Yep, all of these are just common everyday things here, and have been for many decades. I’m all for getting rid of the billboards, plenty of other ways to advertise.
"Even educated fleas do it ", he may just be referring to an old Cole Porter song, I choose to believe he is reminding us of Tank Girl, an unsung bada** of American lore.
Most new neighborhoods build now have a central location for the mail. We have a mailbox at the road that flaps open. You can buy ones that lock. My house growing up our postman had to walk the neighborhood because the mailbox was on the house.
I have seen billboards in other countries besides the USA. In the USA they aren’t always ads. My friend wishes his wife a happy birthday on one every year. Sometimes they congratulate sports teams, graduates and such
As a water operator in a rural town the towers that are used are one of a few forms of water storage options used here. The tower is dual purpose in use. #1 is for storage. The water is pumped up into the "Bowl" for use as people need it throughout the day. #2 is to create pressure in the main line/distribution system and into the home for consumer use. Depending on the height of the tower as to how much pressure is being released coming out and through the distribution system. My tower is 175 ft tall and we normally have between 65 to 70 psi in our distribution lines. Also as we are a small town of roughly 200 people we have a 50,000 gallon storage bowl in our tower which is more than adequate for a days use for the number of people.
Rarely some people have mail slot on the doors like Britain and only in apartments our mailbox is locked.
Many of these differences is because the u.s. have such large country when it comes to school buses and mailboxes at postman just drives up to
Because we generally have large front yards, some have long driveways leading from the road to the house front. Interestingly, our mail trucks are made with right hand drive because they can drive down the road and deliver mail to mailboxes without getting out of the driver's seat.
The water towers are to provide a static, or pressure head for the town water pumps suction side. They keep the pumps from cavitating. Used in areas where water is sucked up from a well.
Urban areas have letter slots on the doors, or boxes attached near the door. Rural areas have the stand alone boxes, or sometimes community boxes attached together on a corner. Rural routes are driven, not walked.
Look up " Burma Shave" signs, a neat, fun bit of roadside history here, especially in the West, love your channel , love, from Ohio
I was scrolling to see whether anyone else would mention Burma Shave... Although I am only 53 and didn't come to the States until 1976 , I always loved the concept of Route 66 and the Burma Shave signs along highways .... perhaps someday I will get to drive Route 66 although that isn't likely to happen until the last vacation is paid off, during which vacation we were on a Symphony of the Seas Transatlantic cruise and one thing that I noticed while on the walking track on the ship was that they actually had two Burma Shave style rhymes as you walked around the track... I likely drove my husband crazy as I would read the signs aloud and everytime I got to the end of the rhyme I would happily say Burma Shave 😂
@kamthornhill477 awww. Neat story! I didn't know about them until I moved from Michigan to California at 13 yrs. Old in 1981, I actually remember seeing them along the highway, I do think it was a fun smart way to advertise!
Billboards aren’t legal in some states, so it’s not everywhere. We have tons of them in California, and now some are screens so they’re really distracting at night.
Mail boxes are prevalent in rural settings so the postman doesn’t have to get out of his vehicle. Yes, everyone and their dog can access it. This is another reason why many people have gone to direct deposit of checks. It goes to the bank and not to the mailbox. You can have your medicines delivered but not if they are narcotics, neither will they deliver diabetic needles.I am home bound and have all my meds delivered. If for some reason I need a narcotic for pain I must get it at the pharmacy. Luckily I haven’t needed any in about five years since my last surgery. Also being rural you may accidentally get your neighbors mail and you can just pop it in their box as you go by.
The mailboxes are different depending on your neighborhood. You can have those boxes on the posts next to the the road or a little box on your house, usually right next to your front door. Most where I live have the latter, but in the house I grew up in we had the former. The postman, or mailman, as we more commonly refer to them (postman is more old fashioned but still very recognized) would park at the end of the street and walk up and down putting the mail in the boxes on the front of your house. For the ones on the street they have these cars with no doors and a right hand drive like you'd see in Britain and they just go driving slowly down the street inserting the mail to each box.
Water towers are common in areas where you have town water instead of wells, they pump water up to the tower and then if the power goes out it can gravity feed the water supply until it runs out. It also makes a sort of water buffer for high usage times, like say half the town comes home and wants a shower at 7PM it helps maintain the pressure without having to run a bunch of pumps.
Types of mailboxes differ from neighborhood to neighborhood. When I was a little girl, our mailbox was attached to the front of the house. We moved when I was 10, and the mailbox was at the road.
Mesh fence made me laugh! We call them "chain link fences".
Regular billboards are bad enough. We also have video billboards that are posted in heavy congested areas
In NYC when its super hot in the summer they used to open a few hydrants up for kids to play in...
Before hydrants were fireplugs,
Also a short stout man might be described as a fireplug.
Also of note, most "mail trucks" (the tiny one the Postman drives) are right hand drive so that they can reach the mail box without exiting the vehicle.
I just bought a locking mailbox but have not had it installed yet. In recent years the problem of mail theft has become a real problem. The locking box has a pull open slot for the mailman to drop in the mail, but I have the key to open the back to retrieve the mail.
In my area locking mailboxes require special approval of the local post master
Water towers are real and prevalent in smaller towns. The yellow school buses have different rules than other buses. You must stop when the yellow ones stop if you are next to or behind the bus, on either side of the road. (Unless there is a median). You do not have to stop for regular, city-run buses unless you are directly behind it.
School buses are always yellow, but fire hydrants do not have a standard color. I see yellow hydrants more often around here. My house (modest, suburban ranch style) has an alarm system with motion detectors. A mail slot in the door could trigger the sensors and set off the alarm.
Converting buses into living spaces is very popular here. Some people buy cross country buses (Greyhound etc ) but a lot of people buy skoolies (school buses). It is illegal to keep them yellow..they have to change the color of them if they are going to take them on the road. 😊
Billboards are not as distracting as he describes. I have driven cross country and commuted long distances on highways for many years and rarely does an accident ever happen. I use my peripheral vision when reading billboards and get along just fine.
For the mail deal many have mentioned the steep penalties, but really there is little reason to steal mail anymore. Fire hydrants pretty much have the similar shapes but can have other colors. In neighboring town they use silver and green.
Ya all they will get is junk mail and bills lmao
@@btnhstillfire that’s my point too. I get maybe 2 items that are junk mail and neither are worth stealing. I don’t even get bills by mail anymore. Email, text alerts and banking apps allows people to go paperless.
I believe the fire hydrants are painted red and made very visible so people don’t accidentally block them when parking their cars. That hinders the fire fighters. The hydrant is usually connected to the fire truck which has multiple hoses. If there’s a car between the hydrant and the truck it makes connecting them more difficult
In the city NY Boston Pittsburgh--- the mail box is attached to the house at the front door at the front door. Some house have mail slot in the door. But in the burbs we use mailbox’s at the end of the driveway. The postman drives a vehicle with the steering wheel on the right side so the can deliver from the vehicle.
Good fences make for good neighbors. They're also efficient ways to keep the wildlife from eating the landscaping. . . . .
Fire hydrants are not always red. The in front of my home as a kid was yellow. I have seen black ones in NYC as well.
You can get locking mailboxes. In the previous place I lived, there was a door on the box where you could put letters in, but it was a one way door since the letters would only slide down into the compartment when you close it. Thus, you could not reach in and get stuff through that door. There was a lower door below it that was locked, that if I wanted the mail I would have to go out there with my mail key and unlock the box.
If you ever get the chance to go to a Perkins for breakfast, you’ll notice they usually fly some of the most massive American flags around! Usually they’ll be like 20 feet by 30 feet.
Fire hydrant bases are often painted red, but not always. Most places have red, yellow, green, or blue caps depending on how high the flow rate should be.
As for mail boxes by the road, many rural houses have long driveways. The boxes are on the right side of the road and the rural carrier either has a right hand drive vehicle or has an extra set of peddles on the right. They can pull up to the box and without getting out, place the mail in the box. There are also "arms" or "flags" on the side of the mailbox that you move to the vertical position if you have outgoing mail. In more built up communities, there is sometimes a main box with the number of smaller boxes needed for that community. These usually have locks, whose keys have a master key carried by the letter carrier. I had a main box like that when I lived in an apartment. Each stairwell had a mailbox for those occupants. And now the part he didn't mention... The rural mailbox was a target for young miscreants with a baseball bat. The passenger would hang out the window and bang the mailbox as they drove by. This action was usually proceeded by the consumption of alkeyhaul. At least in my time it was alkeyhaul, although I never banged a mailbox.
Mailbox Hockey. There's a family down the road from my SIL who have their mailbox enclosed in a cage. My SIL has a double one--a great big one, some "Great Stuff" spray foam, then the "real" mailbox inside. Both systems have stood the test of time--and bored teen-age vandals.
@@Cricket2731 We got ours banged enough times, my brother welded one in shop class. He used 1/8 inch steel plate, had a bolt latch on the front, and it was mounted on a wood 6"x6" with steel plates on the side with our numbers cut out. I wonder if it is still there... It was the last time I lived there and that was 1981. 😉 Back 20 couple years ago, when I was a Dep Sheriff, the "kids" were using Drano bombs. Easy to get ingredients, unknown time from mix to boom, and left a hazmat residue. Blow a standard mailbox all to hell.
@@rexnarloonbrok8858, We got ours blown up with cherry bombs. Usually once a year. Boy, was my Dad ticked off at how many mail boxes we went thru!
@@Cricket2731 The “excitement” of rural life 😎
Great Irving Berlin reference there in regards to the educated Fleas!
Cole Porter I think.
Yellow school buses are also here in Canada. They are great. Stand out. And a lot of fun on bumpy roads if you sit at the back. Also here we have many types of ways people get their mail. My self we have a box on the wall next to front door and most aro7nd here do. The countryside out outskirts some still use the end of the road mailboxes. The ones with the little flag and hatch. Like a sideways breadbox on a stick. Our fire hydrants are yellow.
We have a bus line (like an airline, but buses) over here called "Grayhound" with a grayhound dog in the logo. Here in East Texas (at least, maybe other places) we had a slang term for School buses: "yellow dog", as in "We're gonna yellow dog it to the ball game." which would mean the team was being transported on a school bus rather than, say, a chartered bus like the ones Grayhound drives.
Home delivery of U.S. mail started during civil war. People would swamp the local post office for letters from soldiers and other information. So they decided to deliver mail daily to help people and stop daily trips to post office. Fire hydrants are different colors to define the type. Regular is red and high pressure I believe are yellow. There are also different types made for frost or no frost areas. There are hydrants that allow water to be taken from lakes and streams and need to be pumped only.
I swear you guys have reacted to this one before. I'm having deja-vu
They did. Perhaps that video was deleted for some reason, so they had to re-upload it 🤔
In the town it's self the house may have a bail box on the house by the door. However outside of town the mailboxes are on poles or bricks on the road. The fire hydrants are different colors in different places. usually red or yellow but here in South Carolina they are BLUE!
One of things we used to do while traveling in the 50s and 60s was to play an alphabet game - finding words using the first letter of the words in alphabetical order (we had to pronounce the word to use it). It wasn't until I was much older that I realized that my parents were using the time for us to learn vocabulary. School during vacation.
Parents still play that game. Our kids competed with each other to finish the alphabet first.
Mailboxes in the U. S.:
The mailboxes on posts - I've mostly seen them in rural areas or sparsely populated areas.
Mailboxes on wall outside front door are seen everywhere.
At apartment buildings or complexes, you'll sometimes find a set of rows of mailboxes. Usually, you'll see units of locked metal file-like boxes which can be either outside or in a common area.
I have never seen a mail slot on a door, but they probably exist.
Theft is a common issue, especially packages.
Post WW2 housing booms mail was delivered to mailbox on front of house or garage. Carriers walking to each house on strict schedule was a cause of 'going postal.' Also theft of rose with rate of crime. A community box was added when a number of box numbers reside.
Good luck finding your type of fire connection in the winter when it is iced over or covered with snow.
"Did you have a school bus?"
"Not to go to school"
LMFAO
In North America we're the same way about double-decker buses as British are about school buses. We never see them in life. The first time I ever saw an actual double-decker bus, and rode on it, was in Victoria BC when on a tour of Buchart Gardens.
The school busses here are painted yellow for safety. Yellow stands out more than other color, (except for fire engine red, which is for firetrucks). It is also the color on traffic lights between green and red, which signals "prepare to stop." So it probably makes people automatically more cautious.
LIving in a small US town of approx. 300 people, we don't have home delivery. UPS and FED-EX deliver but to get our regular mail, we have a locked box in the post office. However, those who live out of town have those mailboxes and some have a mile or more drive to the main road, where their mailbox is, often in a group with others, for delivery convenience.
The city has mailmen walking, because the houses are close together. Out in the suburbs or country they have the trucks. I have a friend where their mailbox is on a rope. Her driveway is long, steep, and windy. You have to drive 1 mile (1.6 km) to get to her front door. When there's a snow storm or an ice storm she can't get out of her driveway. A mailbox on a pully system is how she gets her mail during these times. The city has the city streets plowed and/or salted. The city doesn't plow and/or salt private driveways.
School busses were originally painted yellow to be easily visible. They are usually the same color as road warning signs for the same reason.
American English has 44 phonemes (sounds - many for "a") whereas UK English has 37. As a result, a weird correlation is that there are less incidents of dyslexia. This detail continues in countries where there are fewer phonemes.
My city of 100k in MASS has their own water system. We have 4 reservoirs with 3 large water tanks that fill after getting treated in our water treatment plant. There are 200psi water mains that run through our city as part of MASS water resource administration MWRA. MWRA is the main source of treated water for most of MASS. Lynn takes pride in our water and sewer system
I remember when I was a kid there was a competition painting fire hydrants in various patriotic red, white, and blue designs for the 1976 bicentennial celebration. I don't know if this was only in Southern California or if they did it elsewhere as well. It made for some beautiful hydrants until the city came along and repainted them back to boring yellow.
A long time ago I was a substitute rural letter carrier. It was in a the rule area and was 43 miles. We drove right hand drive postal vehicles and the boxes were by the street so you didn't get out of the vehicle. We truly were like a traveling mail office i.e. selling stamps, money orders etc...The house I have now does have a slot for the mail on the house (not the door) but we have a mailbox on the side. The slot is just to small for all the "junk" mail you get.
Mailboxes generally aren't locked, but if you receive a lot of packages or checks in the mail for example, you can always invest in a lock box for more security.
As far as fire hydrants go, here's a fun fact. Many people don't realize that they are also marked by blue reflective "box dots" on the road so that firemen can find them quickly.
As several have said, stealing mail is a federal offense. It is possible to get lockable mailboxes where the mailman slides the mail into a slot and the owner can use a key to retrieve it.
No one on my street has a mailbox. We all have letter slots in the door - I think it's because of olde timey codes. Also, the city owns the strip between the sidewalk and the road so the mail carrier would have to get out to deliver anyway.
It's strange, though, because I've always had a mailbox until I moved to where I live now. Small town, Norther New York.
I work at a water treatment plant. We push water from the plant, through the pipes underground, and it fills the water towers, the towers then push water to the homes across the city. The reason why the water goes to the towers first and then houses, is to have extra storage so that way if the plant malfunctions and we can't supply water for a time, then civilians can still use water thanks to the extra storage provided by the water tanks we fill up.
Billboards are completely banned in the State of Vermont. They are also banned in both the Adirondack and Catskill Mountains in New York State.
Unnecessary tyranny
Billboards are also banned in Alaska , Hawaii and Maine.
You can buy mailboxes with locks but almost no one has them - mail theft does occur but it’s very uncommon and not worth the effort to try preventing