The Name of the Place

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

For beckwall, who will be sorely missed. :frowning:

This is a big country. (I’m being all biased here and just talking about the United States of America, because it would just be crazy to talk about the whole world.) There are a lot of places to go and see and then leave. But you know what? They are all named the same thing. Not like every place in the whole country has the same name, but if there’s a place with a particular name, there’s another place, maybe not all that far away, with the same name. It’s like the people who were forging new lands in the wilderness just weren’t all that clever.

“Let’s see…” they’d say to themselves. “I was born in Springfield, and then when I was three we moved to Springfield, and then I went to work in Springfield for a bit, but then I moved to Springfield for that raise. Now I’m forging new lands out of the wilderness… Hey! You! Get out of here! I’m not done forging this new land yet! Git! Now I’m forging new lands out of the wilderness so I’ll call this place… Springfield!”

(There are seven regular Springfields in Virginia alone. Plus a Springfield Forest, a Springfield Square and a Springfield Station. It’s true, look it up your own self.)

If you want to settle down in a particular spot, and not move from that spot and maybe name your dog Spot (because you already had a dog named Spot, not necessarily because your current dog has a spot on its whole body) you could live in Spot, North Carolina or Spot, Tennessee.

If you like the hustle and bustle of New York City , you have six different New Yorks to choose from, from Florida to Texas. You’ve even got a couple of regular Yorks to choose from if you’re more traditional that way.

If you’d rather trade life in the Big Apple (or the passel of smaller Apples) for a gig in the booming metropolis of Metropolis you could live in Illinois, Louisiana or Puerto Rico. Superman really gets around.

But if you’re feeling pretty gloomy and just can’t go on any longer and you want a place to reflect that feeling you have, the bad news is you can’t live in Death. There is no US place name of Death. But you could live in Death Valley Junction, and that’s pretty close, isn’t it?

So if you decide to move, and you want to be able to remember your new address easily, make sure you start out on a Maple Street and there’s a good chance you could move to another Maple Street in another town with the same name. Especially if you live on a Maple Street in a Springfield.
-Rue. (VA)

2

I once went to Paris. I didn’t see what all the fuss was about. I mean everyone spoke regular english and you didn’t need a passport or airline travel to get there. We just drove across the Texas interstate for a couple hours.

I was expecting to finally be able to use my high school french, but alas, not a person in Paris spoke it. It was a real let down for sure.

Just saying.

3

And how many Dublins are there across the US? Very few of them have Gaelic speakers in them, though (not that Dublin, Ireland is known for it’s abundance of them, either).
I heard there’s a Dublin, Texas, but it used to be a town of note and had two hostelries and gained the name of Double-Inn. That could be a madey-up storey, though.

4

How appropriate a thread, we are moving later this week.

5

There’s a buncha my hometowns across the country. I’ve seen several other LaGranges besides the one I grew up in. Lotta Leesburgs (where I live) too, I think. I’m internationally educated. I went to school in Athens. Impressive ain’t it? I spend 4 days last week in the greater Chicago area. Are there any other Chicagos in the US? I just never heard of another one.

In other news, this Saturday is the big Spring Bass Tournament. The local BASS (Bass Anglers Sportsman’s Society, catchy ain’t it) sponsors a big tournament the last Saturday in March and proceeds from the tournament go to Easter Seals, which just happens to be where I work. So, that’s good. What’s weird is all week long (and it’s happened to me four times this morning already) people will be calling to ask how many boats are in the tournament. I have no idea. So I keep saying, over and over and over and over, that the person who can tell them that info will be in at 9:00 AM. Why this piece of info is important I do not know. All I do know is I gotta be there Saturday, which I don’t want to do, but I have to go be all nice and stuff. The lake (Bass Tournaments are typically held on lakes cause of you know, boats and fish and stuff) is 70 miles away. I get to spend the day making barbeque sammiches cause we give the sammiches to the people when they get done fishing plus we sell to the other people who are hanging around for the day. Believe it or not, people come out and hang around all day waiting for the boats to come back in just so they can watch the weigh in. First prize is like $2500, so I guess that’s a big deal. Oh and it’s a catch and release tournament, so all the bass (basses?) get released back into the lake then have to find their way back to whatever part of the lake they lived in before gettin’ caught. This shall be the main exciting part of my week. Almost makes ya wish ya were me, don’t it? :smiley:

-swampbear (boat clueless)

6

Did you buy a house on Maple Street in Springfield?

7

No, we are on Parley Drive. We’re actually just moving several doors down from the place we live now (a rental) to house we bought in November but are just finally getting to move into. This Saturday, NW Tampa, beer and pizza provided, please come help me move stuff.

:wink:

8

Swampy, You should be proud (or appalled?) to know there’s both a Leesburg and a LaGrange in northern Indiana, near where I grew up. Goshen is the name of that town, and there are 13 of them in the US

I looked up “Springfield VA” on Mapquest, and found only 4 of them. One of then is in my area, near Williamsburg.

Also, is BASS a recursive acronym?

9

Bass fishermen tend to cuss a lot if that’s what you mean. My curiousity is now up. I just have to know how many boats are registered for the tournament. I’ll let y’all know when I find out.

10

woohoo!
I’s BAAAAACK!

ok, fer once I done found the MMP before it was a gargantuan-style TMP, or, failing that, a bohemothic WMP, or even (takes a big deep breath) a supergalaboogeywoogeyflopsydoosey TMP (which is different from a TMP simply by virtue of the fact that it happens on T, and not on T).

I’ll take a stroll off and read the thread now (and hope that my whimsical interposting isn’t too inappropriate when cast against the mood of the week).

been missin’ y’all, and I don’t mean to make my MMP downtime a habit. Nosireebob, I back (with a capital FRONT).

Los Gene-os!

11

dangergene is back! My favorite, umm… wherever that is he’s from, poster is back! YAY!

DANGERGENE IS BACK!!! YAY!!!

So, did ya bring us anything?

12

Hmmmmppphhh!!! :mad: Well, I thought I grew up in a unique…ly named town but turns out there is a Binghamton, CA (stoopit left-coasters can’t even come up wif their own name for a town…gotta steal it from New Yawk!). Not only that, the frickin-frackin CHEESEHEADS :eek: done stole it, too! I mean how many wealthy timber dudes named Bingham were floating around all these states back in the day, anyway??? Or maybe my particular Mr. Bingham was a megalomaniac and ordered all his towns be named after him. Yeah, I bet that’s it! Afterall, rumor has it, he never even was IN my home town.

Ah, well, at least I got to live in Naples for a time. And, no, I didn’t leave there cause the volcano erupted.

There’s a Leesburg, FL, not too far from where the Grampuses are living. I didn’t check for a Springfield, FL, cause I figured that there probably was…complete with a Maple Street. Hey, ya know what I bet is losing popularity as a street name? Elm Street. Yep, seein as all the elms pretty much got wiped out by a beetle (well a bunch of beetles, really), it would be dumb to name a street Elm Street, no?

gene!! Hey, man, I was wonderin’ the other day where you’d got to. settles down with her coffee awaiting dg’s romp through the MMP

Tupug

13

well, I guess I should bring Pie, or is it π?

But I bought it last time I posted, and it’s been sitting on the counter since then, so it’s kinda… icky now. But if no one mind’s chowing down on icky π, well, then there’s plenty for everyone. Really!

Actually, maybe I should have brought magic pudding! (except it’s kinda creepy when it talks to you while you’re eating it).

So… what’d I miss in my sloppy absence?

oh, and much hugs to Swampy for welcoming me back. and I don’t know where I’m from either, but I do know I’m in Singapore. Or I was last time anyone accused me of not being where they were! Oh, and cos I know you’re all wondering, it’s friggin’ hot here at the moment.

And dry!

And hazy!

apparently it’s cos the Indonesian farmers are burning off their rice crops after the harvest, and all the smoke, ALL OF IT, is blowing into my loungeroom! But if there’s any Indonesian farmers in the MMP, I’m willing to be contradicted!

  • cough * hack *
14

That’s it! First beck makes some lame-assed excuse and won’t show, now, now dangergene has that “whimsical interposting” goin’ on! I’ve lost my train of thought on this and I just can’t play along anymore.

15

Springfield, eh? I’d’ve thought that Washington was the most popular name for a town. Cause, you know, George slept there, and then they named the town after him because he now had kids living there. True story.

My home town, as far as I can tell, is unique in it’s spelling, much like Chicago. There’s only one Pittsburgh, spelled with an H. The other town which aspire to be like it all forgot to add that last useless H. Accept no substitutes, I always say.

I didn’t know there was a Springfield over by Williamsburg, bob. Guess if I spent more time on the Og-forsaken Peninsula, I’d know that.

So, anyone else’s picks on the NCAA racket get wiped out by WVU and NC State?

16

*romping for Tuppy *

*romp

romp

romp*

…did I mention it’s very hot?

17

Welcome back, dangergene. I have two questions:

  1. What happened to the long stream-of-conciousness posts that I had to read six times with the Australian-to-American translator circuit switched on?

  2. What did you do with welby?

I’d also like to say that there are far, far too many Albanys out there, but it’s nice to be able to go to Cairo, Berlin, Athens, and Mexico without driving too far.

18

I frequently travel to Cairo. Funny thing though, they pronounce it differently than what they’re always sayin’ on the news. They pronounce it Kaa-row instead of Kii-row in Cairo. I say go with the native pronounciation. Oh and the local high school in Cairo calls itself the Syrupmakers. Also, for all the talk about pyramids and such, I’ve never seen the first one and I’m there two-three times a month.

I sometimes go through Berlin too. The locals pronounce it Burr-lin. I’ve learned a lot about proper pronunciation from the locals of all these famous cities.

19

I grew up in Plainfield, Indiana. It appears there are Plainfields everywhere. My husband and I call this phenomenon P-space, after Terry Pratchett’s L-space phenomenon in libraries. The gist of the idea is that all libraries are one library, and if you know how, you can get to all libraries from you friendly neighborhood one.

We have decided this also applies to Plainfield. All Plainfields are one. So, if I drive around Plainfield, Illinois long enough, and turn a certain corner in the right way, I may find myself driving up the road leading to my childhood home. It would be particularly helpful when I am far from home, like Plainfield, CT, NH, or NJ. Saves a lot of driving :slight_smile:

20

swampy is starting to make me suspect that New York and Georgia are really the same place.