The venerable comic strip “Gasoline Alley” is wrapping up a storyline in which the dastardly assistant mayor schemed to change the town’s name from Gasoline Alley to the ostensibly more modern Electric Acres (without even offering a compromise such as Hybrid Hollow).
Sentimentality saved the day in the funnies, just as it usually applies the brakes to abrupt municipal name changes in the real world. (“I have no idea which jurist, general or fur trader our town was named for. Neither did my father. Neither did my grandfather. We can’t change! We have a proud tradition to uphold!!!”)
Still, considering the number of streets, bridges, military bases, buildings and sports teams that have undergone radical name changes in recent years, I’m surprised we haven’t seen more cities throwing caution to the wind and charging a name makeover to the ol’ credit card.
Think of it as less hackneyed bloviating about “Our infrastructure and workforce are second to none” and more cities singing, “I feel pretty, oh, so pretty…”
There’s certainly no shortage of experts who would graciously dig up some dirt on the pioneer, statesman or industry for which any given town was originally named. I have it on good authority that the founder of Northeast Mugwump never once (*gasp*) requested a paper drinking straw. True, neither paper nor plastic drinking straws had been invented during his lifetime, but we can’t let pesky technicalities stand in the way of cleaning house.
Random renaming projects would be a good start, but maybe we should rip the Band-Aid off and reboot the whole country at once, like the movie industry revamping an intellectual property franchise.
Sure, it might be confusing to mimic Hollywood and have every “Mount” changed to “Plains” and every “Creek” changed to “Ocean”; but as William Shakespeare (the bard of the soon-to-be Funkytown-on-Avon) said, “What’s in a name? That which we call Lower Podunk by any other name would smell of hog rendering plants, asbestos factories and vape shops.”
Copyright 2024 Danny Tyree, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.