Five Digits of Freedom: Finally Getting A ZIP Code

Column for November 18, 2008. I know this is a lazy excuse for a blog post, but it is my material. © 2008

Those yuppie hipsters in Beverly Hills just revitalized the hit teen drama "90210" and I couldn't be less interested. Bringing back the historic ZIP code proves that people often don't think about the five-digit region they live in, unless it is famous.

Tommy Tutone immortalized the unforgettable phone number in the song "Jenny." I apologize if you start belting out 867-5309 at your dinner table this evening. But unless your city is famous, most people across the country don't know where you are. You could argue that California, from Oakland to Sactown, the Bay Area and back down, became famous in Tupac Shakur's "California Love."

Unless you're constantly standing in lines at the post office, you may be unaware of your local ZIP code, let alone your neighboring town's, but that is not the case for folks in Larose, La. They have been traveling to their neighboring town's post offices to get their mail for four decades, according to an Associated Press article.

According to that same article, beginning Saturday, "the 7,000 or so who live in the town can start using 70373 and should soon receive letters and packages in their roadside mailboxes for the first time."

This bit of news really made me think about how I take the post office for granted. In the last two and a half years, I have lived in three different ZIP codes, but because of their design, I have received all the mail sent to me and rejoiced when I received my first articles of junk mail.

While there are certain things about the U.S. Postal Service that make people scream, like identity theft and countless amounts of coupon pages, these are things that the citizens of Larose have not had the experience of pulling out of their end-of-driveway boxes.

Now they have the joy of experiencing everything that comes with owning a mailbox. Like having it knocked over by a reversing truck or a disgruntled teenager with a baseball bat. As well as the occasional animal or insect that decides to make its home inside or the possible ridicule from neighbors that dislike your flamboyantly pink piglet mailbox housing.

The children of Larose will now get the chance to try and hide their report cards from their parents. Magazine subscriptions can be read on the day of delivery instead of on the day that you had enough time to go to the post office.

Members of the campus housing community may be sympathetic to Larose's plight because when I lived in Campus Village Building B, I often found myself saying, "But my mailbox is all the way in Joe West."

According to the AP article, "Residents petitioned for years to bring a rural route to the area, but the switch wasn't made until a recent survey showed widespread support, said Daisy Comeaux, spokeswoman for the U.S. Postal Service."

If only the survey would have been conducted 40 years beforehand …

So, congratulations, citizens of Larose, you no longer have to go to the neighboring town to get your mail. Now you have entered into a world of global identity that includes possible anthrax letters and Victoria's Secret catalogs.