(Ed. note. This is one of a series of fictional sketches of a famous city up in Northern Minnesota near the land of Lake Woebegon.)
Recently, I traveled up to Normal, Mn. in northern Minnesota near Brainard to visit my old friend Herman, the country boy lawyer. I have told of this town before, the small fishing town with the bait shop with the wall of colored stones and the restaurant across the street. Google just shows a blank for this area, as it does for Evanville. Trust me, though, it exists.
The whole town was waiting for us to arrive. Cause we're from Wisconsin we can get all the fireworks they love so much, and actually can finance the trip will the profits from all those cherry bombs that are unavailable in the Northern Tundra.
When we arrived in town, we went right to the coffee shop and got a big, black coffee, extra sugar, whipped cream in one of the traditional Minnesota Viking blue mugs. There was a lot of excitement in the coffee shop that morn.
It seems that Normal was expanding its housing for the first time in its history. The new development, just on the east side of Normal, was called Alleluia Estates. The homes looked like the same square homes that were first introduced in 1950 in St. Paul. They sold in 1950 for $12,500, with the option for a dishwasher for $500 more. These homes were now $150,000. That was not the excitement.
It seems that Alleuia Estates was comprised of several streets named from historical books. Nobody knew for sure who indeed had named the streets: The streets had been named officially Bethsheba Lane, Gomer Lane, Jezebel Ct, Uriah Court, Sodom and Gomorra Ave, Lucifer Lane and Angelic Drive.
The problem became that while there were ordinances that created street names, there had never been established a formal process for eliminating or changing a steeet name. The homes on Uriah Court and Gomer Lane were not selling. Lucifer lane was selling well and Samson and Delila Circle was all sold out.
Some felt that once something was created in Normal, it should always remain the way it was, timeless, like the rest of town. Others, in fact the builders, felt horrified that these homes might remain vacant forever just because of the street name.
There also seemed to be developing a little bit of rivalry among the residents. When they found out that we had fireworks, pandemonium erupted as they surrounded our car trying to get the most ammo they could for the fourth of July fireworks competition---that is what the locals called the event that happened each year after the official 10 minutes of fireworks down at the local firemans park. In short, we sold out in 15 minutes flat.
I just could not stay for the offical city council meeting where the big battle of names would be fought.
Thank goodness I am back in good ol Wisconsin. Where all the street names are straight forward, and where there are plenty of ordinances to do almost anything remotely possible. In fact, where we have more ordinances than people. Alleluia.
