The second Odessa-specific problem is the address itself. A large share of the population lives in West Odessa, the unincorporated stretch of Ector County outside the city limits, where the streets are numbered county roads, the drives are gravel or caliche, the house number is often on a mailbox a hundred feet from the door rather than on the building, and dogs are loose. Deliveries there fail for mundane reasons: two county roads with the same number running north and west of an intersection, a gate with no callbox, a trailer set back behind a shop building. Vivian's Floral is in that grid — its own address is a North County Road West number in 79763 — which is a real advantage over a shop trying to read those addresses from off a map. Inside the city the grid is easier: numbered streets run east and west (2nd and 8th through downtown, then 42nd, 52nd, 87th and University Boulevard), named avenues run north and south (Grant, Lee, Sam Houston, Dixie, Golder, Tom Green, Grandview, Dawn, JBS Parkway on the east side), Loop 338 rings the whole thing, Andrews Highway carries traffic north and State Highway 191 runs the twenty miles over to Midland. Central and downtown addresses fall in 79761, north Odessa around the university and 42nd Street in 79762, the western and southwestern county areas in 79763, the northwest in 79764, and the east side toward Faudree Road and the Midland line in 79765.
Where Odessa birthday flowers actually go is worth being blunt about, because half of these deliveries are not to a house. Downtown, the Ector County Courthouse block and the county and city offices around Grant and Texas Avenues take desk drops all week, along with the banks, title companies and law offices in the same few blocks. The two hospitals are among the largest employers in the city, so staff birthdays at Medical Center Hospital on West 4th Street and Odessa Regional Medical Center on East 6th Street are routine — those go to a department, not a patient room. The University of Texas Permian Basin on East University Boulevard and Odessa College on West University Boulevard both generate faculty and staff orders, and Odessa College is also where the Globe Theatre sits, so a birthday tied to a performance night wants an earlier window. Then there are the service yards: the oilfield companies strung along Interstate 20 and out on Loop 338, the industrial contractors including the Saulsbury Industries operation headquartered here, the pump and valve shops, the trucking dispatch lots. A yard is not a lobby. There is no receptionist, the gate may be manned, the driver may not be allowed past a hard-hat line, and the recipient may be in a truck. For anything going to a yard or a plant, put a mobile number on the order and name the building — dispatch office, front trailer, scale house — or expect a phone call from the driver.