Different or Silly street names

The “Old Salt” and I have spent a lot of time lately traveling on back roads to out of the way places. We have seen some pretty spectacular vistas, and some quaint small towns that showed they had declined in the past but were rebuilding and hoped for a promising future.

One of the small towns we drove through recently did not use first, second, third etc. to name its streets. Instead they were just a simple “One St.”, “Two St.”, “ Three St.” and so on. This very small town also happened to be named after a woman named Martha. I found that rather endearing considering the neighboring town on the opposite side of the Missouri river is named for the first president of the United States, who we all know had a wife named Martha.

This past weekend we were on our way to a family reunion being held at a remote facility that served as a Christian youth camp during the summer. Despite having perfect directions, we still managed to make several wrong turns on the winding country roads. At one point, realizing we had passed our turn, we looked for a place to safely turn around. Just so happens the gravel road we picked was named Horse Feathers Lane . Can you imagine the reaction the residents of that road must get each time they give their address.

I have seen photographs of streets with funny names posted on the web. I have occasionally wondered “ what were they thinking” when I came across some location with an usual name and wished I could discover the history of the name. I think having the job of naming things would be the most perfect job.

A Google search indicates 22,500,000 web pages devoted to the topic of "strange street names" while Amazon.com lists 25,560 books on the same theme. I guess I am not the only one fascinated by such things.

The first house my first husband and I purchased as newlyweds back in 1966 was on a street named Lullaby Lane, The next street over was Rhythm Lane and it connected with Bridal Vale Court. We received a fair amount of good natured ribbing from our friends over that. They liked to remind us that if the Catholic newlyweds were not careful using the rhythm method of birth control they would be singing lullabies real soon.

I once lived near a large subdivision of very similar homes called Hickory Hollow. Residents of that community were constantly writing letters of complaint to the city fathers and the newspapers because of problems with getting things delivered to them. Delivery drivers often drove in circles looking for the correct street until they just gave up and left without making the delivery. Mail delivery was seldom correct or in a timely manner. Pizza restaurants refused to deliver there. UPS left packages on the wrong doorstep. And, if you were expecting an ambulance or the police you needed to stand on the curb with a flag to be sure you were found. All because every street had the word hickory in the name and no one could keep them straight. Hickory Glenn, Hickory Dale or Hickory Way, it did not matter, because the look alike houses made all the street names sound alike.

Regardless of the silly or unusual names for streets, I got off the original intent for this post and that was to show you some of the photo’s I have taken during our gallivanting the last few weeks. Hope you like them.