2022, Family, Food, Kids, Uncategorized, Words

Creative Addresses

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Daughter’s BFF is in grad school in a southern state getting her MFA in vocal performance. I have known her since she was in Grade 1, and consider her a second daughter. She has a beautiful voice, and recently sang in a lead role in a production of The Bartered Bride. She is a cook and loves to bake. She didn’t get a Christmas box of goodies from us, but I baked some of her favorite cookies and sent her a Valentines box yesterday filled with the cookies as well as cocoa mix, interesting pasta, pasta seasoning, fancy pizza crust flour, and a Mr. Rogers figurine who speaks in his actual voice about being wonderful for who you are and asks about your neighbors if you push the button on the trolley.

Her street address is IOOF St. I think this is one of the oddest street addresses I have seen. The clerk at the UPS store sure thought it was odd. I am curious if Baboons know what IOOF stands for, and what other odd or interesting streets names they are aware of. I have my grandfather’s OF sword.

What are some interesting street names you have encountered? What street names would you like to invent? Know any OF’s? What are your memories of Mr. Rogers?

71 thoughts on “Creative Addresses”

  3. when i am delivering and following the gps map on my phone some of the pronunciations make me smile

    minnehaha seems pretty straightforward but the little voice in my phone makes me laugh every time

    international organization to obliterate france is an anti frog group first founded in 1902 by bubba wright to keep french from being allowed to live in the carolina’s

    french we’re looking to settle and ended up in new orleans and quebec instead. to this day there are very few frenchmen in carolina

    me rogers and ruth bader ginsberg are the action figures least found in the carolina’s x
    most found are wrestling figures and gop leadership

    won’t you please won’t you please please won’t you show me your certified address verification social security cad and birth certificate at the site of you polling place once we get the voting machines working properly and get the line moving again
    oh and no food or drink in line especially french fries

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  4. 61 1/2 street and the like always crack me up
    colors animal types and science based names are never used
    we do presidents states childrens names and of course numbers
    i live at 17853 west 262nd place
    do not confuse it with west 262nd circle on the other side of town

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  5. IOOF is the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, one of the fraternal organizations like the Masons and the Woodmen of the World. I never knew any Odd Fellows (not official ones, that is) but I had an uncle who was a Mason and a great aunt who belonged to Eastern Star, which was, I think, the auxiliary of the Masons. Down in Northfield there was an Odd Fellows home, now called Three Links, which was their symbol.

    Come to think of it, I have a friend who belongs, or belonged to a Masonic Hall in St. Paul. Besides seeming anachronistic to me and a little silly, a men’s-only organization imbued with secret rites never appealed to me.

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      1. I attended a funeral once for a relative who was a Mason. There was a lot of stuff in the service that seemed pretty ritualistic and incomprehensible to most of us. It grew increasingly obscure and arcane, till finally I heard my cousin lean over and mutter to my brother-in-law, “I’ll join if you will.”

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    3. Good catch about the IOOF! Fraternal organizations used to be immensely popular in the US. Many were ethnic organizations, like the Sons of Norway or the Ancient Order of Hibernians, and many evolved into insurance companies, since lodges often provided burial and unemployment funds and even employed a doctor for their members. Yes, the Eastern Star is the women’s auxiliary of the Masons, open only to family members of Masons. There are still some Co-Masonry lodges around the world, which accept both men and women and are considered irregular by mainstream Masonry.

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      2. Thanks, CG. I had meant to add that the insurance benefits to members were a strong incentive to membership at a time before other insurance.

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      3. There is still a Sons of Norway building on Lake Street although I have no clue if any SoN activity actually goes on there these days. YA noticed it a couple of weeks back. I had to really draw on my memory to explain what those service organizations were all about.

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        2. They are in the Twin Cities as well. I know they have a glee club, and join with other Scandinavian cultural organizations working to keep cultural traditions alive through exhibits, dinners, and various celebrations.

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        3. Sons of Norway is still there and it’s basically an insurance company. I tried to discover what the advantage of limiting your membership might be to an insurance company but the best I could come up with was the observation that there aren’t many minorities in the Sons of Norway and that affects the actuarial tables.

          When I was in advertising, Lutheran Brotherhood was one of my clients. Another insurance company. They now call themselves Thrivent and I don’t know if they restrict themselves to Lutherans.

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  6. My first job out of college was for an insurance company. I was on the road 3-4 days every week, throughout Southern MN. My admin. person would use Mapquest to print me out directions to the businesses I would be visiting. I discovered that a lot of the rural areas have ‘alias’ road names. I remember looking for Rural Route 3 and having no luck finding it. I stopped at a service station and asked for directions. The guy said, “You must not be from around here. We call it ‘[I forget what they called it].’ Everyone knows that.” This struck me as defeating the purpose of actually naming it, if no one will call it by its given name. No one seemed to be able to follow that logic. When I asked why they didn’t just change the name to match what everyone called it, I was told, “Because everyone already knows. The only people that don’t, are people that aren’t from around here.” Once again, reinforcing the old adage, “Minnesotans will give you directions to anywhere…except where they live.”

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    1. I still deal with this occasionally with “the crosstown”. I know that there isn’t a sign anywhere any longer that says this, but it will always be the crosstown in my world. Every now and then someone looks at me funny – they are either on the young side or have just moved here recently!

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        2. Yes, but so does 694, because the form the circular bypass of the Cities. Lots of metro areas have this.

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  7. I live in the Longfellow neighborhood of Minneapolis. Around here, a lot of the street names, as well as Minnehaha Park and Minnehaha Falls, are taken from Longfellow’s 1855 Song of Hiawatha, which was very popular about the time that the city fathers were naming things. To the extent that the poem reflects Native American legend, the story is derived from Eastern tribes and has nothing to do with the falls here. I suspect that, in their attempt to relocate the story, they were engaging in a bit of real estate promotion.

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    1. Bill, you and I don’t live very far apart! I’m in Standish. Anna is from South Minneapolis too, isn’t she? Hope she’s doing okay these days.

      My roommate, who was born and raised in Michigan, says there’s lots of Hiawatha references there. She was surprised to find so many here, so far from where the poem was actually set. I just took the names for granted; I tried to read the poem once and bogged down within a few pages. At least I stopped before the rhythm made me seasick!

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      1. Anna lives just a couple of blocks from me…I’m officially in Tangletown (although if I lived across the street I’d be in Lynnhurst with Anna!)

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      2. I have a copy of the 1855 edition of Hiawatha because, living in this neighborhood, I thought I ought to. Probably few other poems have been parodied as often as Hiawatha. There’s the Lewis Carrol parody “Hiawatha Photographing” and I have a book Pluribustah, a history of the US up to the 1850s and another called The Song of Milkanwatha, which includes this passage:

        He killed the noble Mudjokivis.
        Of the skin he made him mittens,
        Made them with the fur side inside,
        Made them with the skin side outside.
        He, to get the warm side inside,
        Put the inside skin side outside.
        He, to get the cold side outside,
        Put the warm side fur side inside.
        That’s why he put the fur side inside,
        Why he put the skin side outside,
        Why he turned them inside outside.

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    2. I’m just finishing a book about the missionary Père Marquette and in the book references are made to the missionaries and explorers Hennepin, Nicollet, La Salle, and Frontenac, among others. I don’t know anything about the people who made the decision to honor these men by naming prominent streets in Minneapolis after them or how they came to that decision but I’m inspired to try to find out.

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  8. When I was in high school, my folks bought a parcel of land out in the St. Louis suburbs and were selling off lots to make a subdivision. The first official street was named Sherri Lane. I lobbied HARD for Sherrilee and also for Road, but to no avail. There never was a second street developed before they sold it off, so my sister didn’t get a street named after her. I believe Sherri Lane is still there!

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  10. Rise and Shine Baboons,

    I would have had no idea what IOOF was. Thanks Bill.

    My favorite address is in Bovey, Mn, where there is the corner of Isak and Toivo. (EE*Sock and TOY*VO). Apparently the developer name the streets after his Finnish ancestors.

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  11. I grew up in a very small town (~600 people). My dad and his brother had the two rural routes. Everyone else in town had a PO Box. Dad brought our mail home so our “address” would have been General Delivery. That wouldn’t fly these days – how would Amazon or FedEx find general delivery? The town now has street names and house numbers. I haven’t lived there since the early 70’s so I don’t know if anyone uses a PO Box anymore.
    I recently read a book called “The Address Book” by Dierdre Mask. She covers a lot of topics related to addresses, including how streets were named or renamed, how to give directions to find addresses, what happens to people who don’t have addresses (the majority of people in the world), etc. Interesting read.

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  14. Allow me a mini rant.

    Back in early November, with a referral from my doctor, I made an appointment with a dermatologist due to a growth on my scalp. The earliest appointment I could get was for April 14th. Since then the growth on my scalp has increased in size to the point where it’s difficult to comb and wash my hair. This growth is extremely sensitive to the touch, i.e., it hurts like hell if I accidentally touch it with a comb or even my fingers.

    Just a few minutes ago I received a call from the dermatologists office. They needed to reschedule as the doctor will no longer be working on Thursdays! The earliest appointment now available at the St. Paul clinic is end of July, but if I’m willing to drive to Wayzata, I can get in middle of June. I told them not to bother, I’ll find somewhere else to have this dealt with. Aaargh!

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  15. There used to be a building in Rochester where one of the theaters was, And engraved on a stone at the top of the building were the letters IOOF. So I was always familiar with that. I don’t know any Oddfellows myself. They left a lot of props Up in the attic of that building. Up in the rafters; Spears, decorative But definitely with sharp points, and some other odds and ends.They were all pretty beat up And nothing was ever saved.

    Street names: Our farm address has changed to three or four times and we’ve never moved. We used to be ‘rural route 1’. Then Maybe in the 1970’s we got a street address that, 40 years later was deemed “a problem within the overall addressing scheme” And changed to a different address.That messed up the mail For a good year.

    We used to live on Viola Road, back when the Twins were playing in the World Series and Frank Viola was well known.

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  19. I have a friend who lived on Enchantment Lane in Stacy. Several years after she left that home, another friend (who did not know friend A) moved to the same street, a fairly short and isolated street. As a person who lives on the exotically named Eagan Outlets Parkway, I am envious of those on Enchantment Lane.
    My favorite city names are NowThen MN and Peculiar MO.

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        3. My sister used to live in Harrisburg, PA. The old joke was, “To get to Paradise, you have to go through Intercourse. Of course, if you’re married, to get to Intercourse, you have to go through Hell.”

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  21. I have seen addresses on Nuthatch Lane. That sounds so picturesque, it almost makes me want to move there. But moving is too much trouble. I guess I’ll stick to my street, despite its mundane name.

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