The topic of Jakesprinters’ Sunday Post this week is Road. I don’t often take pictures of roads, but I think about them a lot. There are roads that lead to nowhere — dead ends; roads that lead in a circle or only lead to one place; then there are those that seem to stretch on forever. Sometimes the name of the road gives you a clue about it, sometimes it doesn’t. In the US, a lane means something different from an avenue or a numbered highway. If roads were a person, this would be their “last name.” What about their “first name?”
Some roads have simple names, and it is easy to figure out their origin: they are named after a person in history (in the US, there is always a “Washington” street) or a characteristic about the place before the road was built, or it may be its purpose — for example, every town seems to have a “main” street or a street named after the trees that grew there such as “oak” or “pine.” Then there are the ones that make you wonder, “Where did that come from?” I think about the person who originally named it and shake my head. I ask myself, “Would I want to live on that street?”
When I was living in Knoxville TN and drove north, we would pass an exit that would always make me react that way, so one day I finally took a picture of it.
Sometimes it isn’t necessary to know their names. Sometimes we can just appreciate that they exist to lead us to beautiful places; knowing their name is not necessary. Driving around the Tennessee mountains one day we saw this view. I never found out the name of this road, and I didn’t care.
Last Train to QVille 