Utah may have some urban planning issues, but they were definitely on the right track with that whole streets-in-a-grid-system thing. If only the Lawrence founding fathers had been similarly inspired. I am still learning to find my way around town, and I actually managed to get a bit lost this weekend. It was most unfortunate. But what can I say? The layout of this town must have been patterned after a picture a preschooler drew on the wall with crayon. It makes very little sense. And the naming of streets? What is that about? Apparently it is about making some of us feel stupid. In downtown Lawrence, for example, many streets are named after states. The State Streets didn't seem to be arranged in any particular order until I was told by a native Kansan (and I quote): "It's actually not that hard to find your way around Lawrence if you keep in mind the order in which the states entered the Union."Well, sorry young sir, didn't soak up that bit of historical trivia well enough to use it to navigate the streets of Lawrence. But maybe someday I'll get it down.
For now I'm just longing for the days when things seemed orderly and logical, and finding almost any given address was essentially as easy as finding point (3 , 4) in a third grade math book.
3 comments:
I love that you got lost! I love it! You make my day on a regular basis!
I'm pretty sure, however, that pretty much every other state has said named streets. When we lived in Idaho last summer all the streets were named after other cities in Idaho, so when people said, "Oh yeah, she's over on Lewiston," you never know if they were talking about the city she lived on or the road. To make matters worse, they split all the roads up into three sections so there would be a Idaho Falls West Avenue, Idaho Falls East Avenue, and Idaho Falls Main Avenue. In case you weren't confused enough already. I got lost coming home from work literally every day.
It seems that with a husband majoring in history, you would know when all the states entered the union. Was Shay a bit disappointed in you? :-)
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