A History of Geography

It is so funny how people will often be attracted to live somewhere without regards to the geographic memory that the locals have. There is a rather new development in Astoria called something like Eagle Ridge. Yes, you too can plunk down several hundred thousand dollars and have the locals say, “Oh, you live off the Dump Road.” You may correct them by saying that your street spurs off of Williamsport Road, but they will continue calling it the Dump Road. At this point the home owner should resign and accept the fact that they live off the Dump Road.

The people in one area of Lewis and Clark have long ago come to accept the idea that they live in Pig Pen Crossing. I’m sure people living off the Dump Road will one day accept and own their geography as well.

There are a lot of content people living in Boring Oregon. They’ve come to terms. I’m sure I’d come to terms with where ever I moved. I always though it funny that the area where I live was once known as Melleville. There was a sign in Seaside that pointed to Melleville up till about five years ago. Sure, it isn't Snotville or anything like that, but still.

One thing I don’t think I could deal with is a really long street name. I was once in a town that that was settled mostly by Polish and Russian immigrants. There, they named several streets after the town’s fallen soldiers. Streets were tagged with fifteen-letter, multi-consonant names. So imagine spending ¾ of a million on a house and your return address is one that you will never be able to pronounce.

So it has now become a fantasy of mine to become a developer and give the streets really awful names like: Dickhead Drive, Asslove Street, Cow Pie Place, Carnal Court… I’d like to see who the hell would accept living on streets named like that. I could have interesting neighbors.