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Try to Think Outside of the Box
Updated September 21, 2005
Where is Your Sense of Pride, Your Originality?
I don’t want to come off sounding like an intellectual elitist, (because we
all know that I’m not smart enough to pull that off), but sometimes I have to
wonder about the intellectual prowess of the folks who claim to have settled
this great land of ours. (Well actually this great land that we’ve stolen
from some earlier settlers. And before you get all high and mighty I’m sure
that at some point your land was stolen from someone else too.)
But what I’m referring to here is the creativity displayed by these
‘settlers’. Picture with me if you will, back to the pioneering days as great
city planners are sitting down to decide what to name the streets. The first
genius suggests, “How about if we name the big street in the center of town,
you know the main street where everyone lives – how about if we call that one
‘Main Street’?”
What!? They couldn’t come up with something better? How many cities have you
been to that all have such pathetically predictable streets names? What are
we gonna call that street that runs next to the docks? “Dah, how about Dock
St?” GENIUS!!
Now this one runs through the town’s market place; what do you think? “How
about Market St?” Next to the mill, Mill St. STUNNING!!
And then some folks decided to get really clever and instead of naming the
streets for where they go, or what’s around them, they name them after trees
or flowers like: Elm St, Chestnut St, Walnut St, Pine St, Rose Lane or Morning
Glory Ave. Does any of this sound familiar? Does this sound like your
town?
My favorites though are the zero imagination crowd - they just number the
streets. “Hey Bob, what do you think we should name the first street next to
the river?” Bob, whose expression clearly demonstrates either extreme
concentration or a losing struggle with a silent-but-deadly fart, quietly
scratches his head; then slowly answers, “I dunno, how about First Street?”
BRILLIANT! Bob’s a Mensa inductee. “Bob, we’re going to put you in charge of
naming the next 69 streets. Have at it Bob, and... um... what’s that stink?”
And it’s not just the streets. Most Americans came here from Europe. They
left behind the tyranny, the hardships and the poverty to start new lives in a
new land; and when they got here they started naming the cities after the very
places that they were fleeing from. Here is a partial list of cities just in
Pennsylvania: New Alexandria; New Berlin; New Bethlehem; New Britain; New
Cumberland; New Florence; New Galilee; New Holland; New Kensington; New
Lebanon; New Oxford; New Paris; New Philadelphia (that’s right, Pennsylvania
is home to both Philadelphia and New Philadelphia – WOW!); New Salem; New
Washington; New Wilmington.
Don’t even get me started on Jersey, oh sorry I meant New
Jersey. But I think that the all time winner goes to New York city, in New
York State. The folks there came to America on the short boat. I just
picture the folks in York, England waving good-bye to them and wishing them
well.
And when they arrived here the looked around and said, “We’ll call this great
state, ‘York’! No, wait, that’s taken... aahh... we’ll call it ‘New York’”.
Cheers when up all around followed by juice and cookies and a short nap. Then
they decided to name the city. Already impressed with their own creativity
they decided to name the city New York as well. And of course the streets
running north and south from the river; “We’ll just number those”. And the
streets running east and west; “We’ll number those too!”.
It’s just plain embarrassing. I think it all comes down to how the question
is asked. If someone said, “It’s a beautiful place. What should we name this
new found land?” You know how the Rocket Scientists are going to answer to
that one; “Let’s call it ‘New Foundland’”. It’s up there near
the New England states.
And rest assured this still goes on today. Check out these sites:
Site 1
Site 2
And you can always sound-off here.
Copyright 2006, Bill O'Reilly
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