The only way you can turn is right

I love my town.

Partly I love my town because of its idiosyncrasies. I don't understand them, but they do give me a chance to chuckle.

My town lies smack-dab up against the university where I work, except that that's a different town. It starts just across the street from the end of my block, five houses away from mine. It wasn't that way when we bought this place three decades ago; I'm pretty sure School Town's city limits were where they are now, but my town stopped a few miles short of my subdivision; we lived here a couple of years before our little municipal utility district (I always loved that that made it a MUD) was absorbed into the city. The city limits sign out on the highway has "leaving" my town and "entering" ST on the same post.

That's not a new practice; I don't remember a time when we could drive from the house where I grew up toward the college without passing signs like that. The two towns—cities now—have completely separate governments, and that has manifested in different business models, but they've always lain shoulder to shoulder on the city maps.

But I'm never quite sure which way I'm heading here, and this week, that just got more confusing.

I grew up a couple of blocks from the most direct route from the downtown of my town to the college in the other town. That street is called South College, which my little-kid brain somehow interpreted as "South of the College" rather than "South to the College," which assured me that my house—and thereby my town—was south of the school. I never entertained the possibility that that didn't align with larger maps of our community as a part of our state; after all, half a dozen blocks from our house toward the university was a street—in our town, not the college's—called North Street.

So if we got on South College and headed toward the school, we passed North Street, so surely we must be headed north on the street that, obviously, had to be south of the college. That took most of my life to straighten out; even now, if I take South College toward downtown and pass North, I'm pretty sure I must be headed south.

The school once had gates all around it, and they were named for the relative sides of the campus: north, east, south, and west. The student bookstores and, later, eateries and bars lined up along the side called Northgate, which in my kid-brain meant it was the side of the campus north of my town. Mother's favorite fabric shop and beauty parlor was on the other side of campus, but I don't remember hearing that area called "Southgate" until I was at least old enough to drive.

"Westgate" has always been somewhat undefined in my mind; it may have been the campus entrance to the student center, but I couldn't be sure of that. "East Gate" has always been perfectly clear: it's the main drive that extends eastward from the main campus building to the street that was once the main highway through the two towns. I'm okay with that.

Our downtown area has its requisite "east" and "west" streets, too. I grew up thinking the "east" streets run east of the old highway and the "west" streets run west of it, although in fact they run pretty much southeast, parallel to—you may have guessed it—South College (and the "south" part of the old highway). So "east" and "west" streets parallel "south" streets, and at one point, because of the bend in the old highway, two "east" streets intersect. So how would anyone guess which way they're heading?


A few years ago, the city started a big new housing development near my neighborhood. The main drag from town to its main entrance is one of the east-west streets, which is fine with me since I've sort of figured out directions on  my side of town.

The street into the subdivision runs perpendicular to West X, then splits into a horseshoe-shaped street so that the base of the U runs briefly parallel to West X. Logically, the two parts of the U should be "East U" and "West U" (since they run parallel to West X), but instead the developers decided to designate them as "North U" and "South U." Most of "North U" runs mostly eastward and "South U" runs to the south or west.


When these streets were built, North U joined up with the street at the top of our block that parallels West X but had an old family name. Since it has only about four addresses on it,  the city decided to rename it to match the longer length of North U. So now I can drive west on West X, turn south on a stretch of highway, and turn again to the west on North U.

And people wonder why I stay confused.