7 Outdoor Objects I Never Saw Before Moving to America 

Edit: 1) Canada and Mexico have yellow school buses. 2) *Chain-linked fences.

Watching someone who wasn’t born in America describe American things is honestly very entertaining

Funny how in the UK, the Royal Mail delivers the post, while in the US the Post Office delivers the mail.

The steel water towers were also an early air navigation aid. During the late teens/1920s air mail aircraft navigated visually and having the name of a town on a tower you can see from miles away was pretty important.

In inner cities, the fire department will sometimes put a special thing on the fire hydrants to allow the water to spray out in a controlled way so kids can cool off. This was done because otherwise people themselves would open the hydrant and a ton of water was wasted. In winter, they attach a long high visibility stick the hydrants so they can be found when buried in snow. 💕🐝

Here in the States, your British gardens are called a yard. A garden is a section of the yard that you designate to grow flowers/vegetables/fruit.

I have a French friend who once commented on American flags everywhere. He's since become a US citizen and has an American flag on his front porch.

Fashionably late to the party here, but the yellow busses are standardised across the US as a safety measure: drivers are always taught to watch for them and drive very carefully, as well as to watch for the stop signs to pop out the sides of the bus, which MUST be obeyed as any other stop sign. That yellow colour is super important.

The UK 'fire hydrant' is basically a sign telling the fire brigade the nearest location they can plug their equipment into the mains. They lift a small plate in the ground and connect their hose directly to the mains water supply, using a T-bar that allows them to turn the valve so their hoses use mains water pressure to fight the fire with. (We had the same equipment on a trailer when I was in training in the British Army because the folks on guard duty could get to any point on the camp before the fire brigade, so we were taught how to use actual fire brigade equipment in case there was a fire. Really interesting, and actually pretty fun training!)

The mailbox is important. It delineates the maximum distance from the front door that one can walk in a bathrobe (OK, dressing gown) without being presumed to be a mental patient.

"Going crazy being in quarantine for 8 days" Lol, what a difference a year makes!

Poor Laurance, just 8 days into quarantine and he already thought he was going mad. Glad he made it through!

The irony is, a lot of the original New York fire hydrants were actually made in England in South Yorkshire 😂

In Farmington, NM, a billboard stands next to an adult bookstore that says "Jesus is Watching You."

I remember when my German friend saw a mailman driving his little mail truck. She was in awe! She thought they were only in the movies!

Regarding watertowers: In America most water is used in the morning when people get to work, and at night when they cook dinner. Multiple towns often pull from the same water supply so you start to run out. The water towers fill up from the water supply during non-peak hours and then supplement the supply to their community during the peak hours.

I laughed out loud at "so you know what country you're in." But in my experience, those huge flags are usually "so you know where that cool auto dealership is"

I’ve been a professional fireman for over 16 years and I’ve not once made the connection between the helmet and hydrant until this video! Well done!

Old school bus driver. Fun fact: The specific color of all school buses in the USA is called Nation School Bus Chrome. It is against the law to paint any other vehicle that color. And if you choose to purchase a retired school bus you must change the paint color. Cross over lights must be removed also.

Interesting bit: Many roads have reflectors embedded into the pavement. To aid in night driving. Yellow=yellow line Red = wrong way White =boundary BLUE = Fire Hydrant Most people have never noticed the blue ones. Thankfully the fire fire fighters do. Good show ole chap! Cheerio

I moved to US from England and lived in California for 30 years. I've experienced a lot of what you say so I'm laughing a lot when I watch you. As far as yellow school buses I made a point of really wanting to go on one as I had watched Charlie Brown and other American TV shows. When my daughter went on a school trip I finally got a chance. But won't ever repeat it, the kids screamed the whole time! Still, I can cross it off my bucket list. P.S. I still don't like ice in my drinks!

“stuck inside for EIGHT days!” LOL Hello from July.

Watching this in December and laughing over "being in quarantine for 8 days" hahahaha

As a mailman, I really cracked up at the whole out-of-nowhere "Don't touch the postpeople" bit. I love all of your little asides, they make your videos great.

American water towers work (at a basic level) by pumping up water to the storage area at the top. The pump is only strong enough to pump water up to the tank area and not much stronger (for efficiency reasons). Gravity is used to pull water from the tank and help maintain water pressure in the water system. The pumping fill speed is balanced with gravity pulling water out so the tank at the top of the tower doesn't go empty.

When I was traveling I was chatting with some guys from Europe. They were joking about what if those green signs with the city name and population were real and I was like they are. You pass that every time you enter a new city and they also have elevation. They stared like I was telling them the yeti was real.

I remember when I lived in Moscow for a while in the mid 90s, I'd frequently get questions about REAL American culture vs. what was seen in Hollywood movies. One of the things I had the hardest time convincing my Russian friends of was that The Yellow School Bus - flashing lights and all - was a real thing. I had a tough time not only convincing them such a thing really existed and how common they were, but that they came in two sizes: the regular sized school bus, and the "short" school bus. Predictably, they had never hear of or seen a short school bus, and when pressed for how I knew such a thing was real, I had to admit that I used to ride one for a while. I... um... chose to not further to explain more the short bus.

When I was a kid I used to live near two gas stations that were in a battle to see who could fly the biggest flag. As I recall the city ended up refusing to permit larger flag poles to be installed due to "unsafe flagpole conditions" ?

Water towers equalize pressure. If there is a sudden change or air pocket, the pressure differential is handled in the tower, rather than by a pipe underground, keeping flow consistent

Re: fire hydrants, I recently found out that they are color coded to indicate how much water pressure they have! The red ones are less pressured than the yellow ones, so you'll usually see yellow ones, say, around bigger buildings like apartments or something where the fire hoses would have to spray further, and the red ones around single family homes. Now you will always notice the color difference. It sticks out to me.

Meanwhile, I grew up in a house that literally had a white picket fence, with a mailbox out by the road...that had an american flag sticking out of it, and a fire hydrant up by the sidewalk. I never thought of ANY of them as unusual to anyone. Such an eye opening video :D

Most houses in a major city such as Philadelphia do have mail slots in their doors. The mailman gets his exercise having to go up and down steps to deliver the mail. Some houses do have an external mailbox attached to the wall next to the front door.

The first I visited America, I cycled around my brother's neighborhood (in Delaware) thinking "There's something different but I don't know what it is". Then I realised that it was the absence of letter boxes in the front doors.

My favorite local billboard cautions motorists to "Avoid distractions while driving!"

Wish I'd seen this last year. Cute. Anyway, back in 1976, during the Bicentennial, in a lot of areas (where I lived in Southern California for sure), a lot of fire hydrants got painted in various paint schemes using the colors red, white, and blue. There was one that was painted as a monk, in red/white/blue habit. Someone hung a placard on it one day that read, "I am not a monk, I am a friar hydrant". Of course they repainted the hydrants at the end of 1976 =(

When I was a child, I lived in the country. During the summer, I would make a point of walking to the end of the driveway to get the mail directly from the post man, whose name was Merle. He was really pleasant and fun to talk to.🙂

The flag was something that puzzled a British friend who visited here several times back in the Eighties. A fellow railfan, he was fascinated at the sheer size of American trains. And even some of the trains have flags on them -- New York subway cars have flags. He said that back home, the only things with flags on them were government buildings. He couldn't understand our tendency to fly them from homes, businesses, and just about everywhere. I said it was probably because the average American identifies with the flag -- after all, our basic document starts "We, the People-" and most of us take that seriously. It's ours, not the Queen's.

There is a community on I-81 south of Roanoke, VA which has TWO water towers. They painted them, not with the town name, but with "Hot" and "Cold". . Yes, really!

This probably won't be interesting to most, but if you found the US' roadside mailboxes interesting, I think I've got another one for you. Our states have their own governmental Department of Transportations which have road maintenance crews who also plow snow off the road with huge dump trucks (assuming the state gets snow). After working with these crews, I've learned that they very commonly blast snow off the roads so hard, that they'll destroy these mailboxes. Sometimes it's spectacular, with mail flying everywhere like some important confetti. Many houses mount their boxes on steel poles afterwards. Sometimes the snow will shear the box strait off of the poles and be found in a pile of snow. The roadside mailbox system has a few flaws, particularly for northerners.

I've seen 2 or 3 different vlogs where RU-vidrs from other countries came to the US (one was from England, the other was from the Philippines), and they got so excited when they saw a school bus pass by. I just thought that was so cute.

The reason you see mailboxes along the street in rural and suburban areas is because mail is delivered by car in those locations. Having the mailbox along the street makes in much easier for the letter carrier to deliver the mail. If you take a closer look at one, you'll see a flag on the side that can be raised or lowered. The resident will raise the flag when they've put mail in the box for the carrier to pick up. The carrier will then lower the flag once they've picked it up.

The yellow color of school busses is restricted to school busses, to make them stand out. They are also quite strong and safe. The black stripes on them is very thick, strong steel.

We have hosted several foreign exchange students over the past several years, one from Sweden said America has appt of foods on sticks! Corn dogs blew his mind, as did pop cicles, kababs, etc., One girl from China went into a grocery store and just started crying because she had never seen anything like it in her country. She started recording grocery shopping and sending it to her family back home and they were all crying. We really don't know how good we have it here.

Your witty humor is such a treat❤❤❤

Edit: here is a link that explains it better ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-yZwfcMSDBHs.html Water towers store water. They’re connected to the system. When everyone is asleep and not using much water, the pumps are still running and fill it up. In the morning, when everyone is using water at the same time (showers, making breakfast, brushing teeth) it becomes too much for the pumps to handle they can’t keep the pressure up, so the water in the tower makes up the difference by keeping the pressure at a constant level using gravity

Great video. In the U.S. we even have something called Flag Code. It is a set of rules that are to be followed when handling the U.S. flag. Such as how to properly fold it, how it must hang, when and where to fly it, don't ever let it touch the ground, how to properly dispose of a torn flag, etc. It isn't actually legally enforced, but you'll see the military following it to perfection and a lot of citizens respect the flag code.

And cardinal birds! The first time I saw one, I was walking along a residential street. A cardinal was on the front lawn. I thought it must have escaped from a cage inside. Stood there for a few minutes, watching and wondering if I should go and ring the doorbell and help catch the exotic bird.

If you are ever in Huntington Indiana you will love our fire hydrants they have all been hand painted as different animals and are quite beautiful and unique 😊

Those “mesh” fences are more commonly called chain link fences. Never heard them called mesh, but Laurence is the wordsmith here.

Things I never thought I’d hear: chain link fence being called a mesh fence, and someone thinking fire hydrants are sexy.

I think curbside mailboxes started out in rural areas where it wasn’t feasible for a mailman to walk between houses that were a long distance apart. Which is also why our mail trucks have steering wheels on the right so they can reach the mailboxes without getting out of the truck.

"I'm starting to lose my marbles, being in quarantine for so long" Date of video: march 20, 2020

Oh, one more comment on the school buses... Last summer, there was a big town-sponsored event nearby for which the only road was closed, so they used school buses to ferry everyone back & forth from the center of town to the outlying parking lots. EVERYONE in my generation was shocked and jealous after boarding the buses; we expected our standard semi-padded bench seats with bare metal (or barely padded metal) hand rails, "catch and smash your fingers" windows that opened by dropping down when the latches were released, a single small heater up near the driver's seat (no A/C), and thin aluminum bodies... what we got was thickly padded, comfortable bench seats (with actual seat belts, fer gosshakes!), well-padded handrails on the seatbacks, well-behaved windows, a sound system with speakers in the ceiling, and actual air conditioning throughout the well-insulated passenger area! None of the kids could understand why their parents were all babbling about the bus... LOL

Letterman also refers to someone who has made the varsity team in school sports.

I've got to say, I've been watching your channel for about two years and have never seen this one! I'm really sorry I missed it before. It's your funniest EVER! Really hilarious! Thanks 😊

We also have concrete “water towers” in America, except that they’re on the ground and they’re not actually towers. They’re called ground tanks. Lol. My husband used to go into the towers and tanks to clean them and repair them when needed.

Water towers are really quite simple actually. They have some source of water usually a well under them that they fill the tank with. The pump on the well pumps at a constant flow but people use water at random so once the tank at the top has been emptied a specific amount the well gets turned on and tops up the tank and they cycle repeats itself. The tank is up so high because that's what provides the water pressure to move the water through the pipes.

"If you don't have insurance, you are screwed." America defined.

My brother went to law school in London for one year, circa 1976. He tried to mail a package home to the USA. The postmaster would not accept the still connected block of stamps he applied to the package. He was told they had to be separated before being applied!

Only just discovered this channel a couple of weeks ago. Going stir crazy after a week in your apartment in March of 2020 seems so deliciously naive today.

I’m telling you, the largest American flags you’ll ever see are in car dealerships, that are usually the first building you pass coming into a big city Edit: Especially coming into Dallas.

when you see really big, or multiple American flags, you will probably find a car dealership.

Regarding UK fire hydrants, the H on a concrete post is just a marker to help the firefighters find the hydrant. The actual hydrant is underground and is accessed by opening a cover in the ground, and then screwing in a standpipe. A t shaped key is then used to open the hydrant.

Love your videos!!! By the way, the "mesh" fences are called "chain link". Keep up the good work!!!!

Someone hook him up. If you're a school bus driver take him for a ride.

The irony is that our mail trucks are the only ones with the drivers’ seats on the right side like the British

Another thing common in US is big outdoor emergency warning sirens to warn the public of tornadoes, enemy attack, nuclear spills etc... We have them all over the place here in Cincinnati Ohio. On poles, up on roofs of public buildings, out on golf courses and parks. They test them the first Wednesday every month at noon for 3 minutes and they are very loud.

You're so cute Lawrence, I never thought about school buses much as they've always been around. Most don't have picket fences but tall wooden fences, but only in the backyard, as HOA's don't allow frontyard fences, lol. Now I do have one around my backyard pollinator garden, and I love it!

My husbands home town lights up their water tower like a present at Christmas every year.

I guess my childhood dog was pretty smart. She did jump the waist-high chainlink fence regularly. The truly enormous flags are usually on car dealerships. I never noticed that until my husband pointed it out to me and now I can't unsee it.

Placement of mail boxes has changed over the years in cities and towns. In older parts of town, mail boxes were usually mounted on the wall, next to the front door, or a few may have had slots in the front door. In rural areas and in houses in town built after, I don't know, sometime in the 1960s, mail boxes were placed at the street so the mail carrier could drive down the street and put mail in without getting out and presumably deliver more in a trip. Even more recently, like in my neighborhood (built in the late 1980s/early 1990s) there are cluster boxes, where the mailboxes are in one spot for several blocks' worth of houses. An advantage of that is that they have individually locked doors for each address, and there's a large door at the back for the mail carrier. So my mailbox is on a different street from my house. In some rural areas individual mailboxes are only on one side of the road, so your mailbox might be across the road.

My hubby is an Aussie. In Australia they have post boxes. Fire hydrants are yellow. Wherever there are flowers is called the garden.

Me, watching this in early June 2020 and hearing 8 days of quarantine called “a long time”: Oh honey, no.

Remember, America has mail, which is handled by the United States POSTal Service, whereas Britain has the post, which is handled by the Royal MAIL Service.

Truly a follower for a long time. Thanks for pointing out some of the positives in the USA. And I've always loved the Brit sense of humor. It's why I've watched a lot of BBC since back in the 60s, whenever I could get access.

In some areas, mailboxes are along the road. This is so the postman can put the mail in the box without getting out of their vehicle. Also, postal vehicles have the drver on the opposite side from normal so that the driver would be able to reach right out to the mox and put the mail in.

Do Brits have red barns? That seems like a very American thing.

I grew up in Michigan in a neighborhood lost in the mists of time. The year was 1971 but it seemed that the calender here had stopped around 1940. If you looked around not much had changed. Our streets were still gravel, the houses were old. Some of them still had outhouses in the back. But we had plumbing. And grass. Our family house had a wooden frame and was sided with white wooden clapboard and surrounded by a lush lawn meticulously maintained by my father. At the end of hot summer days our soft, deep green grass was more cool and refreshing to roll in than a dip in any swanky swimming pool in a neighborhood far away. The edge of our lot was marked by an idyllic white picket fence through which a stepping stone path to the gate that was laid by my father. Up against the fence were unapologetic, floridly loud peonies that sang out "True Love in June" with all of their hearts. I used to marvel at the impossibly tiny stripes of red and brown stretching out boldly from the innocent white centers. Where were they going? What was their target? What the captivating scent compelled me towards I years later recognized as romance. But I was just a child. It confused me. All I could identify with was wanting to eat them. But I didn't. But I did eat the impossibility full, red luscious raspberries that grew next to them. My father said he that the raspberries grew so well because he had the right soil laid. His friend with heavy earth moving equipment brought the soil to our yard from the banks of the swampy river just over the hill. Behind our garden were the twin pines that grew to be 60 feet high. From our kitchen window we watched them dance in the wind like Fred and Ginger or Baryshnikov and Kirkland for most of the year. In May and June the twins became towers of ornithological song rejoicing in the triumph of life over winter, life over death. Somehow, we had all beat the odds for another year. But this was so long ago and this is all that all that is left. Like Polaroid snapshots fading in my mind. My father didn't live long. Before I was grown up he died. The living pool of summer verdant refreshment he left us soon reverted back to its natural state of moss and pine needles. Without tending the raspberry bushes they were choked out by weeds. And a thief in the night stole the peonies from the roots down. But I remember in my skin the touch of the tender green grass. I still feel my tiny, little girl legs walking the long distance to the peony bushes, my delicate fingers caressing their fragrant, fragile, white delicacy. The heady scent stays with me, decades past. Even still, in the heavy heat and humidity of Michigan Julys the burst of just picked red bumpy celebration, roses for your mouth, plucked from thorny bushes, is still alive, loving my tongue and my tongue loving it back. A kiss, I suppose. I remember the white picket fence, a symbol of protection, a symbol of us, and my father telling the same old worn out April Fools joke every year about a robin perching on it. How silly! There's still snow on the ground! And that tenderly laid stone path leading us out of the gate of the white picket fence.

I’ve been watching your videos for awhile. Very entertaining. For decades in the hot summer heat, fire hydrants in the cities would be opened to gush water into the street. The kids loved it. In the early 1970s I was living in an apartment in Brooklyn, NYC. So many hydrants were running rampant that the water pressure was demonstrably lowered, causing putting out fires to be troubling. The fire stations gave out free a hydrant caps to replace the normal side facing one. This had a few small holes that when the hydrant was opened there was a sprayed arc of water. I had gotten one for the hydrant in front of our building. Every single kid for a few blocks around would use it. Very satisfying. - BG

Talking of flags, Makes me cry every time I watch it: the closing titles of American Sniper. Keep up the good work Laurence, great content.

When I was little our mailbox used to be attached to the house right outside the front door. When I was maybe 12ish we got a new mailbox that sits on a post in the front yard. Apparently when we switched to the new mailbox our old mailman was really happy and mentioned to my parents that it was a benefit to him because that meant a few less steps he had to walk up/down everyday. So while those types of mailboxes might mean a few more steps for the homeowner, they help make the mailman's job a little easier. Plus another benefit is that they have so many different sizes so you can get one to fit packages in as well as letters/bills.

"Going insane after 8 days" *laughcries from Mar 2021*

I do remember that in "Keeping Up Appearances" Hyacinth Bucket, pronounced Bouquet, would terrorize the post man. He made an all out effort to silently deposit the mail in her letterbox. It was hilarious.

In St Paul, MN, the vast majority of houses have a mail slot where the mail carrier puts the mail in and it goes right into the house. Occasionally you will see a house in St Paul that has a free standing mail box out in front by the sidewalk but that’s a rare exception. The suburbs usually have the freestanding mailboxes

I've never heard a chain linked fence called mesh before.

I foolishly thought owls brought the post in the U.k. Hmm my whole life has been based on a lie

I like the letter box on the door. It is very convenient and more secure.

Mesh fences, aka chain-link fences. The mesh part gave me a chuckle. 😄 Americans for the most part are very patriotic. But never had I seen so many American flags as in the days and weeks immediately following 9-11. It was really touching. 🇺🇸 Our pronunciation is pay - tree - OTT - ik.

On water towers: They allow a smaller pump to meet the overall demand via pumping excess water into the tower during periods of low demand, and having their flow supplemented via water from the tank during periods of high demand, rather than having to size a pump to meet max demand. The reason they are so high up is to store not only the water, but also the energy to move that water via the pressure generated in a tall water column, ie the main pipe that drains the tank. Side note: many single residence wells in rural areas use a similar tank concept, only instead of height(gravity) providing the energy storage, the air in the tank is compressed by the water rather than being allowed to escape the tank. The system often has a valve stem like on a tire to added compressed air to the tank before even pumping water in the first time to establish a minimum system pressure.

Who's watching this months later, laugh/crying about how naive Lawrence was to think 8 days was a long lockdown?

I love my country and you make me love it in a whole new way and I really appreciate that!

Grew up in Reno, Nevada...I've not seen a water tower here. I was quite surprised by them when we went to visit relatives in Nebraska. Our water supply is from Lake Tahoe, through the Truckee River (which runs through town), with nary a water tower needed. Now I live on a farm and we have our own well.

I am always amazed when I see total tornado destruction and someone displays the American flag!!!! It's like they are saying "We may be down, but we will get back up!!!! We will rise again." Awesome!!!! 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

Watching the part about the fire hydrants reminded me of something. In the US, with rare exceptions, all fire trucks are equipped with pumps mounted in the middle of the chassis, with the operating panel either right on top (behind the cab) or on the driver's (left) side. I was a member of a fire company. We were buying a new engine, and looking to sell one of our old ones. A fire brigade in the UK contacted us looking to buy it, and they were amazed at the set up. Apparently, all the pumps/panels are at the rear of the engine. A couple of their guys came over and had a blast operating it, learning the different hose set ups, etc.

yeah the fire hydrants in the UK and under ground in like a drain like thing. they are quite easy to use if you know how to use them. :)

I never rode a school bus until about 4th grade. I walked 1+ mile (to school and from) K-garden through 3rd grade. On one ride, our bus got stuck during a deep snow storm, and we had to wait for another bus, sent to rescue us.

The "Today I Found Out" RU-vid channel recently did a whole segment on school buses. There's a national standing committee for school transportation safety. The yellow color, easy to distinguish in poor visibility, was one of the first regulations they recommended.

"Mesh fences" - chainlink fences, as we actually call them.

LOL, I'm laughing at the whole "mesh fences". Never heard anyone call a Chain-link fence that before.

Lol,.I love seeing America through your eyes😁 You make us seem much more interesting than we are😉♥️