Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Tag: New York

  • Insignificant Synonyms

    I sometimes used synonyms or euphemisms for small, inconsequential places. They even find their way into Twelve Mile Circle articles occasionally. They were just generic terms for middle of nowhere spots where nothing every happened and nothing ever would for the remaining history of the known universe. However, they didn’t really exist. Or did they?…

  • Presidential Death Locations

    After examining birthplaces of the Presidents of the United States, I shifted gears and did the same thing for the places where they died. This became a little more problematic. Historians place more attention on exact places of birth, undoubtedly because it’s a more cheerful subject. I began with the shared spreadsheet compiled in the…

  • Lockport

    The website hit came from Lockport, Illinois. Well, Lockport sounded familiar, although from a different time and place than Illinois. It also seemed quite descriptive, a lock on a canal combined with a port (or perhaps a portage). Locks would be ideal places for settlements during the heyday of canal travel a century or more…

  • Catbird Seat

    “In the catbird seat” is an idiomatic expression in the United States. But is that true anywhere else? I don’t know. Essentially it means “a position of great prominence or advantage” (Merriam-Webster). Regardless, this was a rather unusual expression. What exactly did it mean, I wondered for so many years. Even so I never considered…

  • What State U

    I mentioned the University of Idaho in a tangential comment on Résumé Bait and Switch. I focused on its location in Moscow, the city in Idaho not the one in Russia. However, I noticed an additional feature I didn’t discuss at the time. The western edge of the university ran amazingly close to the state…

  • Geo-BREWities

    My interests collide every once in awhile. I’ve mentioned my unnatural compulsion to visit breweries several times before. So, an overlap shouldn’t come as a surprise to regular readers. This time, an industry publication mentioned a beer dinner where they paired courses with beverages from Oxbow Beer in Maine. A brewery named for an oxbow…

  • Land of Disco

    I came across an unusual neighborhood in Raleigh, North Carolina where many of the streets were named for different genres of dance. Why yes, it was a mobile home park. How did you guess? It further confirmed my theory that trailer parks have the best street names. They use labels that everyone would love to…

  • Bowling Greener

    I work from my home most days. So I have an IP Phone on my laptop that communicates with our Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) system back at our physical office. Anyway the telephone rang — well I’m not sure those are even the right words anymore. Let me start again. So the laptop opened…

  • From Camp to Town

    When I mentioned The Bloodshot Eye recently I hadn’t realized that I’d stumbled upon a “thing”. I’d encountered a long history of annual Camp Meetings held by the Methodist Church. Back then I featured the unusual circle-and-spokes streets of Pitman Grove, New Jersey (map). Of course that included the tiny Victorian-era cottages that lined them.…

  • Congrats or Something

    It was like one of those mystery shopping contests where someone enters a store and suddenly confetti and balloons rain from the ceiling when the one-millionth customer crosses the threshold, and wins a big prize. Except it was four thousand. And I couldn’t provide anything valuable. Congratulations to “Peter” for posting Twelve Mile Circle’s 4000th…