Previous 12MC articles delved into creative and sometimes bizarre pairings of street names with suffixes. Those were explored in posts such as Order in the Court, He Went Thata Way and No Way! Way!. Enough with the Courts and Ways (curds and whey?). It’s time to drive.
Line Drive
Readers from international areas devoid of baseball might wonder why Line Drive would be an odd street name choice. It’s an intuitive term to those of us who grew up with the sport, and similarly difficult to translate to outsiders. No doubt, someone trying to describe a Cricket term to me would have the same problem in reverse.
Instead I’ll steal the dictionary definition: “a ball that is hit by the batter and goes in a nearly straight line not far above the ground.” It can be dangerous to players on the field at the receiving end of a line drive and can also lead to spectacular plays when handled properly.
Consequently I found several Line Drives at municipal ball parks and baseball diamonds including two at professional minor league stadiums.
- The New Hampshire Fisher Cats, a Double-A affiliate of the Toronto Blue Jays plays at Northeast Delta Dental Stadium (formerly Fisher Cats Ballpark) at 1 Line Drive in Manchester, New Hampshire (map). What is a fisher cat? It’s a type of weasel.
- The Iowa Cubs, a Triple-A farm team of the Chicago Cubs, plays at Principal Park, at 1 Line Drive in Des Moines, Iowa (map).
Disk Drive
I suppose at one time maybe 15 years ago Disk Drive would have sounded like a clever street name for an industrial park hoping to attract information technology companies. At least the occurrence in Madison, Alabama had an honest-to-goodness linkage to the IT industry. Hexagon, a software development and services company, maintains an office there albeit with a street address other than Disk Drive.
Honorable Mentions
There were often several examples of each name. I tried to select ones that were the most representative.
- Scenic Drive, Hamilton, ON, Canada (map)
- Cattle Drive, Austin, TX (map)
- Over Dive, Vermillion, SD (map)
- The Drive Drive, Benoni, Gauteng, South Africa (map). This was an amusing Google Maps error. Other online maps labeled it The Drive with no suffix attached so apparently the true name was more than Google could handle
- Sunday Drive, Hanover, PA (map). That was as close as I could get to Sunday Driver.
- Just Drive, Fort Worth, TX (map). It was located in a trailer park. Of course it was. I’m still looking for the more crude variant Shutupan Drive, which I think would make a fine name for a street. I found a coffee shop in Incheon, South Korea called Shutupandtakecoffee which made me recall the Soup Nazi episode of Seinfeld. Shut up and take coffee! No coffee for you!
- Could there really be no Pile Drive?
The Best (or Worst)
I held a special fondness for Doctor Drive, located in a number of places nationwide. The answer might not appear all that obvious until converted to its logical abbreviations. Doctor Drive shortened to Dr. Dr.
The example I highlighted from Virginia Beach would be noteworthy from a couple of perspectives. First, it intersected with Hospital Drive so that implied maybe at one time it could have been appropriately named for its circumstances. Second it offered additional opportunities for abbreviated mischief. Thus, a legitimate address here might be: “213 Dr. Dr., VA Beach, VA”!
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