A street by any other name
March 12th, 2008, 1:04 pm · Post a Comment · posted by Joanne
What’s in a name? Apparently, it all depends on where you want to put it.
Let me make it clear right from the start that I don’t have a dog in the fight over whether to name or rename anything after John Mellencamp.
I don’t know John. I didn’t even go to school in Seymour.
I have certainly enjoyed several of his songs and videos, but I could say the same thing about dozens of other performers, and I don’t know any of them either.
Anyway, I can’t really say I have an opinion on whether something should be named after John in honor of his induction this week into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but I do have some observations.
One is that, if you’re going to name something after someone, it’s better to name than rename. Let them have something fresh and new, that’s all their own.
I came to that conclusion a long time ago, when the nation salved its grief over an assassinated president in part by giving new or existing structures the Kennedy name. I was just a kid then, and I certainly had no objections. I was grieving, too.
As the years went by, though, I looked back and rather wished Cape Canaveral hadn’t been changed to Cape Kennedy. Canaveral was a 400-year-old name, with its own history and its own place in the world. (Actually, in 1973, the name of the cape itself was restored, with the Kennedy Space Center retaining the Kennedy name.)
There was also Idlewild Airport, now JFK in New York. Idlewild supposedly is an Indian word, but I wasn’t able to verify that. At any rate, it was a name worth keeping, one that could stand on its own.
There was nothing political or disrespectful in my wishing that these two places had not been renamed. I just felt that some things deserved their own place, and their own name, in history.
If a street is renamed for John, I have one more observation: When I think of the times he sings about, I think of the days when kids “scooped the loop” and cruised along Chestnut Street, causing traffic jams and driving adults crazy.
Now they’re the adults, but just for a little while, they had the time of their lives.
