We used to pick our mail up at the post office where we had old timey post office boxes like this:
@jana Love it.
I actually grew up next door to a post office... right in the heart of a little coastal New England village, with a train station in my backyard, and a bar across the street... beautiful old stone church and library down the avenue, cute little drug store, hardware, and diner down the other way. Not far from the water. It was extremely pleasant and quite idyllic, but way too fancy for me. I'm now more fond of my simple life in the woods in a flyover state.
@cocopeaches lol
My Mom owned the diner in our town. We lived in an apartment above it and had a bar and the volunteer fire department across the street. We learned to sleep through everything lol 
@jana That's cool. I secretly wished that I worked at the diner, but that was not what my mother had in mind for me. She and my dad still eat there to this day. The owner is an older Italian braud who has been serving food on paper plates because she can't afford a new dishwasher and she refuses to go out of business. I definitely don't miss the firetruck sirens! or the mail trucks, or the trains... especially not the traffic.
The central coast of California. Probably the best place to live in California honestly.
I grew up in a nice Los Angeles suburb filled with trees. It looked mostly like this (but imagine the cars are all from the 90's).
Inside, we are all playing Nintendo, or reading books. Outside, we are walking home from school with huge backpacks full of books, playing with our dog, or playing tennis.
This is all interesting! Do you know what prompted this thread? A bunch of posts, "These are the streets I grew up on..."
And the picture is of a street in a video game.
It's striking.
A military base in Southern California, then the suburbs of Boston and rural New Hampshire, back to Southern California, ultimately to plant roots in rural New Hampshire.
Scorpio sun, Sagittarius rising, Aries moon conjunct IC.
@livefreeordie Was that El Toro? My dad was stationed there, I grew up nearby in Fountain Valley, California. I spent my childhood roaming around Disneyland, Laguna Beach and Catalina Island. My mother spent her whole life in California, I could not wait to leave. I never felt comfortable or safe there.
@sherry Camp Pendleton! Never made it to El Toro. Spent some time at Miramar via pilot I dated in my twenties lol.
I’m glad I had the time I had with California, but I do not wish to return either.
I grew up at the North entrance to Yellowstone National Park in the very small town of Gardiner population 600 in the winter & up to 800 in the summer tourism season. Here’s a picture of the historic Roosevelt Arch, inscribed: “For the benefit and enjoyment of the people”. President Roosevelt established Yellowstone as our first national park in 1872. To enter the park, you drove through this arch, which was constructed entirely from rocks out of the Yellowstone river, which flowed nearby. I remember in the winter months, my sister and I walked a mile to school and often had to pass by bison resting along the road side. These days, that would be unfathomable to let your child do so! But back then, it was normal and when I came home afraid one day and asked my parents, what should I do about walking around the bison because they scare me? They said, just cross to the other side of the street! This was the 1980s. The drawback of living in such a small town was the lack of social and creative outlets for those of us who were in elementary or junior and high school. Unless you were involved in sports, there really weren’t other activities for those of us who were not athletic or not interested. Unfortunately, many of us found our own ways to blow off steam and a lot of it was getting in trouble! I too ended up leaving my small town when I was a teenager, to get out and see the world, to see what was beyond the 360° range of mountains around our town. I went all over the nation and eventually to other countries as well. But, as a young woman in her early 30s, I returned home and I have been here since. It is an entirely different experience living in a nice quiet natural area as an adult. I feel fortunate to have grown up here and to have received the one on one education and the closeness of a tight knit community.