I have lived at 53 Poor Street in Andover, Massachusetts. for the past nearly twenty-five years. In 1994, when I told my mother the address of the house that my husband and I had just bought, she wondered aloud and half seriously if I might be able to get the name changed. In her case, it wasn't as outlandish an idea as it might otherwise seem. For two decades my father had been the chief building inspector of the Connecticut town where I grew up. Mother had habitually heard from Dad about shenanigans at the middle-management level, enabling perhaps equally improbable sleights of a bureaucratic hand. But I had no problem at all with my new street's name. In fact, I quickly came to enjoy telling strangers on the phone, who had misunderstood me, "P-o-o-r. Like 'not rich.' No money." Together we could relate to that concept, or at least contemplate it for a moment of instant rapport. One guffawed and retorted, "That's worse than Third Place." Those familiar with Andover's reputation for affluence would often express double amusement. To them, I would say, "It's not where the poor farm was, and Andover did used to have one. It's somebody's name."
To be continued.
To be continued.