On Fri, 8 Jan 1999, Mike Devonshire wrote:

> K-
> Don't forget culvert crawling.
> Maybe they're mostly city kids.
>
> T

Oh, right -- I remember crawling a long culvert when I was in third grade,
on a dare, I think.  Seeing that culvert now (probably 60-80 feet long,
maybe 2' or less in diameter) makes me shudder at the thought of being
inside it.

The culvert, in East Lansing, Mich., very close to an elementary school I
attended, runs under a street named Narcissus Drive.  This is in a
neighborhood known locally as the "Flowerpot", where most of the streets
are named for flowers.

Narcissus is not a popular street to have an address on.  Almost all of
the builders who had a choice on corner lots built houses facing the cross
streets (e.g., Marigold, Lilac, and Daisy) rather than Narcissus.

However, many years after the incident alluded to above, I lived for a
year in an upper flat which had a Narcissus Drive address (the lower flat
of the same house faced Lilac).  Having that kind of street name gave me
some empathy for people with "funny" names.  Giving my address often
generated laughter, ridicule and queries about my personal narcissism and
my behavior around mirrors.

People who insist that street names make NO DIFFERENCE, and laugh at those
who take part in street naming controversies, have never had this kind of
experience.  But the classic example of a difficult-to-live-with street
name must be Booger Hollow, in Birmingham AL.  Would you buy a house on
Booger Hollow Drive?  Would you want to try to SELL a house with that
address?

Perhaps the economic consequences caught up to it, because the name was
changed a few years ago, and no longer appears in the Birmingham section
of the zip code directory.

Nonetheless, I would have stayed in the Narcissus Drive apartment another
year, had the house not been sold out from under me.

---
Lawrence Kestenbaum, [log in to unmask]
The Political Graveyard, http://politicalgraveyard.com