di Napoli, a Watertown

[Baker, John]

In Kentucky, too, it is a commonplace for the major streets in a town to be named for the towns to which they lead.  Sometimes this results in anomalies.  In Columbia (pop. 4014) the major street leading west is Burkesville St.  Once it leaves town, however, that road splits, with one branch leading to Burkesville but the other leading to the smaller town of Edmonton (pop. 1586).  In Edmonton, of course, the road becomes Columbia St.  If you continue to take the road west, you come next to Glasgow (pop. 14,200).  There it seems that the residents disdain Edmonton as too small to have its own street, so the road, again, is Columbia St.  So Columbia is honored with street names in two towns that it does not itself recognize in this manner.
 
 
John Baker
 

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From: American Dialect Society on behalf of Mark Mandel
Sent: Sun 3/21/2010 3:02 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: di Napoli, a Watertown



We lived for 20 years in Framingham, MA. A while after moving there from
Berkeley I developed a theory that every city and town in the Commonwealth
has a road named for each of the others.

m a m

On Sun, Mar 21, 2010 at 1:34 AM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:

> The same is true in a number of places in Massachusetts--e.g., Brookline
> and Newton streets in respective towns, Dedham Street in Newton changing
> to Baker in Dedham (not quite a reversal), etc. And it's not just
> Massachusetts--Milwaukee St. in Madison, WI, used to be the street
> leading to the road to Milwaukee before being replaced by the
> interstate, and, of course, it was not named "Milwaukee" 75 miles to the
> East.
>
> And, of course, Cambridge was initially known as Newtowne, but that was
> long gone by the time Cambridge Street was named in Boston. Can't help
> with the pond, unfortunately.
>
>     VS-)
>

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