I’m beginning to think New York City had it right.
Actually giving streets, schools and other locations names can only cause trouble.
I have been writing Captive on the Carousel. for nearly three years and have completed more than 750 posts. The fourth one, back in the summer of 2020, was about a crusade to change the names of streets in the Fairfax County, Va., subdivision where I lived as a teenager.
The subdivision was called Mosby Woods, and the names of the streets were Civil War themes. Within the last decade or so, statues all over the south have been taken down and all sorts of names have been changed.
There’s actually sort of an irony involved. One of my high school’s rivals was named after that great southern general Robert E. Lee, one of the more famous Virginians other than the actual founding fathers. That high school was renamed after John R. Lewis, a great man but with little or no connection to Virginia other than driving through the state on the way home to Georgia.
I suppose it could be worse. There used to be a high school in Manassas named after another southern general, Stonewall Jackson. That name got changed to Unity Reed High School. I looked that one up and it was named for Arthur Reed, listed in Wikipedia as a “security assistant” at the high school.
Now I don’t want to insult Mister Reed, who might be a wonderful person, but have we really reached the point where security assistants have high schools named after them?
I mean sure, it’s Manassas, but …
The Mosby Woods issue was apparently settled by changing a silly number of names. Sure, it made sense to change Confederate Lane to Continental, even if it breaks my friend Mickey’s heart. He grew up on Confederate Lane. Mosby Woods Drive was changed to Fair Woods Drive, and Reb Street became Cross Lane.
But they changed two others that made no sense at all. Ranger Road became Cardinal Road and Raider Lane became Fox Lane. There is just no way the words “ranger” and “raider” have any particular connection to the south.
Oh, and they left the most offensive name of all alone. Plantation Parkway is still the name of the main drag in Mosby Woods.
I suppose it could have been worse. There was no Slave Street or Pickaninny Place. Oddly enough, at least one street name stuck out like the proverbial sore thumb. One of my closest friends lived on Sherman Street.
Of all the name changes, the dumbest had to be the elementary school. All four of my younger siblings attended Mosby Woods Elementary School, which recently had its name changed to Mosaic Elementary School.
Say what?
As I said way back at the beginning of this post, maybe we all just ought to go the New York route. Change Mosaic School to P.S. 244, change street names to numbers and avenue names to letters.
The only folks who would be offended by those changes would be people with artistic sense, folks who appreciate beauty,
In today’s America, that would be a very small number.