There’s little to wonder about why some rural folks might have personal identity issues.
Though we’re so often linked to our home soils and the land in general, there’s much to challenge our senses where the functions of boundaries and addresses are concerned. That came to mind this weekend as we discussed a farmer’s hometown address and whether that address could be found in the county adjacent to the city to which the address is tied.
It can be downright confusing.
The crossed boundaries and addresses of my own upbringing might be a good example — perhaps an extreme example, but a true example: I was raised in an unincorporated little place called Veefkind. Veefkind didn’t have a post office by the time I arrived on-scene as the fifth generation on our farm there (the former office having become our farm’s chicken coop after it closed). We had a Spencer address on our rural route — Spencer being a few miles to the northeast in Marathon County but Veefkind being in Clark County.
Having a Spencer address meant that, after our Veefkind and Heathville one-room schools were closed, my siblings and I would attend school in Spencer. That would have been too simple though, and we were part of the Loyal School District — in Clark County but a few miles to the northwest and actually a couple miles farther than the school in Spencer.
Being part of a church was part of my upbringing, so it only would seem sensible that the church we attended would be either at Loyal, where we attended school, or at Spencer, which carried our mailing address. But none of the already-confusing situation was good enough for my parents, so we attended church at Chili, a small town a few miles to the south of our farm.
I won’t even mention that the incorporated municipality that the unincorporated Veefkind rested within was the town of Sherman — the mailing address being from the village of Spencer, the school in the city of Loyal and the unincorporated church-bearing community of Chili being part of the town of Fremont.
To this day, I have no idea how I explained where our farm was to inquiring souls in lands far away while I served in the U.S. Marine Corps. All I was sure about was that I’d write my parents’ names and “Route 2, Spencer, Wisconsin” on an envelope and mail it from some faraway place, and that it would somehow end up in the mailbox at our home farm.
The U.S. Postal Service didn’t seem give much mind to what town, village, city or county I was from. The letters got there and care-packages full of goodies were returned; much else didn’t matter.
We’d have thought things would change, us being part of the high-tech 21st Century and all. But they haven’t changed much, as evidenced by the confusion we found from the weekend’s discussion about cities and counties.
Come to think about it, I receive mail from the Osseo Post Office in the city of Osseo, though I live in the town of Hale. At least I’m in the same county — Trempealeau — as the Post office, considering that residents in Jackson, Eau Claire and Clark counties also receive mail through their Osseo addresses.
I also don’t have it nearly as bad as those folks down in the village of Pigeon Falls, where they have a post office that provides no rural delivery. So, in that village, people can choose to either have a Pigeon Falls address if they use one of the post office boxes, or they can have an Osseo address if they prefer mail to be delivered to their homes.
It all makes me simply want to reach out and latch onto the land, which is one of the least-confusing ways for me to know my place. And that, I shall.
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