Signs of the Times

Less than ten minutes from my house is a one-acre fenced yard with a lovely frame house and a handmade sign on the gate that reads, “Please close gate, cow in yard.”

I love signs that catch my attention and stay in my memory.

“Beef—it’s what’s for dinner” is printed on a large advertisement board in a local pasture, surrounded by unsuspecting, grazing cattle.

Before the Chrysler Center was constructed, the wetlands and woods were razed in preparation (sadly) with a large sign in the muddy field announcing “Tree Preservation Farm.”

GodSpeaks billboards offered divine messages beginning in 1998 by an anonymous donor.

“Let’s meet at My house Sunday, before the game.”

“We need to talk.”—God

“That ‘Love Thy Neighbor’ thing…I meant that.”—God.

And many of us grew up with the Burma Shave signs (from 1926 to 1963) along highways:

“The bearded lady tried a jar. She’s now a famous movie star. – Burma Shave.”

“If you think she likes your bristles, walk bare-footed through some thistles. – Burma Shave”

But street signs are the most memorable and entertaining.

My small neighborhood boasts Leisure Street and Idle-a-While Circle. The subdivision was obviously planned as a retirement lure. One town away is Easy Street. I snickered over Mountain Lake Road in a flat, forested section one town away until my father explained that Mountain was the family name of the property owners.

Familiarity prevented me from seeing the humor in the intersection of Crooks Road and Corporate Drive, although I did wonder about the naming of Woodward Avenue, a boulevard with a grassy median, and the avenue South Boulevard.

The funniest intersection at that time was East Boulevard South, South Boulevard East. (In 1994 East Boulevard was renamed Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard in honor of the civil rights leader.)

In high school, we thought it the height of wit to refer to the Rochester intersection “Letts Rush.”

History of local street names is a fascinating study. Squirrel Road in the Heights was originally Adams Road for Henry J. Adams, owner of the farm that became my neighborhood, where the streets were named for his family: Caroline and Margaret (granddaughters), Bessie (wife), and Henrydale (?).

Grey Road, between Adams and Auburn, was an Indian trail with stagecoach stops at one time. South Squirrel was once known as Webster Road. No doubt, Squirrel Road earned its name from the number of oaks and squirrels in the area.

Part of a Sauk Indian trail ran from Detroit River to Pontiac, up Dixie Highway through Flint to Saginaw. In 1819 the Saginaw Trail was the first surveyed road in Michigan and called Pontiac Road from Detroit to Pontiac.

In the 1820’s it was renamed Woodward Avenue after Judge Augustus Woodward, Detroit’s first Chief Justice, and made gravel. In 1909, concrete was poured for one mile in the country (Oakland County). Woodward Avenue brought John and Matilda Dodge to Rochester in 1908 to buy a 320-acre farm for a weekend retreat, later to become Meadow Brook Hall.

But my favorite intersection was in Pontiac—Mack Square and Mack Square. I’d called my brother for directions to his new residence and that was the final destination he gave. And yes, I saw the signs.

Even funnier was my brother’s explanation.

“They renamed the four streets around the square—Paddock, Pike, Auburn, and Wide Track—as ‘Mack Square’ after Stephen Mack,” he told me, “the first settler in Pontiac,” a farmer who later built flour and saw mills.

Since it incorporated a square, where there four intersections with the same name?