Hey, who wants to have a little fun? I mean, there’s not much to be had, is there?
We have a president who is so … so … shocked that he’s lost his re-election fight that he’s convinced himself that his alternate reality is the real one.
Our heroes keep falling in droves. Dawn Wells (Mary Ann on Gilligan’s Island); Phil Niekro, one of seven baseball Hall of Famers who died in 2020; Gerry Marsden, who sang one of the definitive (and most beloved) British Invasion ballads of the mid-1960s (“Ferry Cross the Mersey”).
Everywhere you look, there’s death. There’s lunacy. There are so many reasons to shrivel up into the fetal position and hole up in your basement.
But then, some welcome absurdity.
I was driving up Eastern Avenue in Lynn the other day until I hit the intersection at Western Avenue. So far, so good. Right?
But wait. In what world do east and west intersect? If “east” points one way and “west” the opposite way, they’re not supposed to intersect. But they do here. Sometimes, mapmakers must throw their hands up in despair.
I suppose a lot of these things stem from when streets were built and named, especially by developers who may have known how to construct houses, but obviously didn’t know basic orientation.
There’s another curious thing about Western Avenue (which, according to a pre-Civil War street map a friend gave me for Christmas, used to be called “Main Street”). It doubles as Route 107, which actually runs northeast, through Lynn and Salem, if you’re looking at a map. It’s the only street that runs from one end of Lynn to the other (the Salem to Saugus borders). But there is absolutely nothing “west” about it.
So when the city carved out a thoroughfare that connected Western Avenue to the beach — and ran it through East Lynn — that street, quite properly, became Eastern Avenue. If city planners had named it anything else, we wouldn’t be riffing on this.
Now, here are some other quirks.
There are five streets in Lynn named for the Great Lakes, but only four of them are in the same general area: Erie, Huron, Michigan and Superior (all of which are in the general vicinity of Eastern Avenue).
So where’s Ontario? Why, it’s up in Pine Hill, of course!
Quick. What’s the name of the street that goes from Myrtle and Walnut Streets to Wyoma Square? If you said “Parkland Avenue” you would be incorrect. From Walnut to Reservoir Road, that street is Dungeon Avenue. But once you get past Reservoir Road, it suddenly becomes Parkland Avenue.
And what about downtown Lynn? That continuous thoroughfare that runs from the end of Market Street into Swampscott actually has three names. It’s Broad Street until you hit the end of Chestnut Street. Then, presto! It becomes Lewis Street.
That actually makes sense. Broad Street is the definition of its name — a nice, wide street with a lot of stately structures. Lewis is not Broad in any way you want to discuss.
Then we get to Ocean Street, which actually begins way back on Nahant Street and runs parallel to Lynn Shore Drive until it takes a bend to the right at one of the city’s more convoluted intersections, and follows the contour of Lewis Street.
But then, it takes a jog down to the beach, which makes “New Ocean Street” necessary after the Eastern Avenue lights. Oh, and there’s an “Ocean Terrace” too. Hey, we get it. It’s near a beach.
Den Quarry Road in Ward 1 takes a sudden turn up a hill, and the street that was Den Quarry Road becomes Cedar Brook Road. To flummox us even further, Cedar Brook becomes York. As Ricky Ricardo used to say “Ay, yi, yi.”
Still, none of that is as ridiculous as the South Shore of Boston, where Routes 93 North and 128 South actually share the same stretch of highway for about 10 miles — the point of origin being Route 95. That has got to be a cartographer’s nightmare. And we wonder why people get lost.
