Like many of our neighbors, we took advantage of the borough’s generous offer to provide street number signs for a minimal fee. It was an unexpected surprise, however, to come home one day and find the sign not only arrived but installed, plumb true on a sturdy metal fence post right on the corner of our driveway. 

Here’s the problem — one of those “What were they THINKING?” kind of things: Not only will none of the posts installed in my neighborhood on West Skyline, or indeed all along Skyline and Diamond Ridge, be visible for very  long once winter arrives, by the time spring rolls around the posts are going to be twisted and bent to the ground after a winter’s worth of plowing. 

I appreciate the good intentions — really, I do. But whoever came up with the idea of using 4-foot fence posts, and then to boot staking them so close to the edge of the driveway, surely hasn’t spent a winter up on the ridge in Homer.  Or, for that matter, in Moose Pass, Seward, Cooper Landing, which I assume were posted in a similar manner. 

Not to worry — I will use the 4-foot fence post elsewhere in my yard. But the street number sign? I’ll be purchasing a 10-footer for that — and  placing it well out of the reach of the plow. 

Marylou Burton