Where the heck is Waldo? If you look at his driver’s license, you may still not know.

We have lived in four places in Michigan where the addresses on our drivers licenses did not match the geographic location of our house. Why is that?

The post office says it is about how postal districts are drawn. Seems to me zip codes handle that, so what purpose do the phony, inaccurate city names really serve? The Celtic Knot restaurant is in Lakeville, Michigan according to the proud and prominent road signs on Rochester Road and Lakeville Road. Nonetheless, the Celtic Knot is required to put Leonard, Michigan on their licenses, mail, and other stuff, even though Leonard is nearly five miles away. People hankering for a Guinness searching downtown Leonard for the Knot will never find it. That makes me sad.

For the record, the mail does not even come out of Leonard anymore. Our Lakeville mail is distributed from the post office way up in the metropolis of Dryden, so it does not identify the distribution center. When asked, post office employees cannot explain the conundrum, but assure us that it is necessary. But why? In this era of digital data magic, it makes no sense to any normal person.

Many people in and around the technically nonexistent town of Lakeville prefer having a Lakeville address over one with the name of the odds-on candidate for Oakland County’s first ghost town. Some Lakeville locals resort to buying a post office box at the Lakeville Post office, the only building the U.S. Postal Service acknowledges as being in Lakeville, Michigan.

We like living in Lakeville. We like the Lakeville brand. It has a nice friendly sound. Whenever we call a service company though, they ask for our address. We give it to them, but have to explain that we do not actually live in or near Leonard. You will need a GPS to find us. That makes me mad.

A recent Hallmark movie, Love on Ice, was set in Lakeville, Michigan. That made me glad at first…until I found out it was actually filmed up in North Bay, Ontario. Surprised they didn’t film it in Leonard.

John Barczyk

Lakeville