What's in a name? A lot, if you live on my street...

When giving my address to a service person over the phone recently, I was amused to find that the street name actually made the person on the other end of the line laugh. I know it's an interesting street name because I've gotten similar reactions before. See, we just moved here a year and a half ago, so it's still new to me that I get such a reaction. In my old town, I had a street address that made it sound like I lived in New York. You know, one of those fancy-shmancy newfangled 911 addresses with lots of numbers in both the house address and the street name too. I sounded important.

Now, I just sound plain... well, hick! I no longer live on the high-falootin' sounding 1500th St., but I reside on good 'ole Muddy Trail. Yep, you read that right, I live on Muddy Trail. You would be shocked at how many times I have given someone my address and they've come back with "Is it really a muddy trail"? Yes, Virginia, it truly is a muddy trail.

There are probably some paranoid people cringing right now, criticizing me for revealing the name of the road I live on, so if you happen to be a serial killer reading my blog and you want to come and kill me, please feel free. My giant dogs will be happy to eat your face for lunch and so will my shotgun if the canines should fail. Hey, I told you I'm a hick! Why, the dogs almost attacked my husband accidentally when he went out back the other night and forgot to announce himself. He wanted to see if he could spot our goldfish in the pond better with a flashlight and he was wearing a dark colored hooded sweatshirt. He had the hood up because it was cold. He didn't turn on the back light because he had the flashlight. Thankfully, our giant alpha male recognized his voice when he said very loudly, "WHOA!!!" just prior to nearly being eaten. If they'll eat us, I'm certain they'll eat you too. But, I digress.

Don't get me wrong, Muddy Trail is a fine place to live. It's a good road at some times of the year, not so good at other times. Central US weather can be brutal with its extremes. I actually took a picture of the road last spring in case we had to prove car damage from the condition of the road, which literally disintegrated due to too much moisture.

We also had to make an emergency trip last winter to the car lot to purchase a four-wheel drive truck so we could get up the hill to our house on the ice and snow. Our poor pathetic little Dodge Dakota was not cutting it and was stuck at the bottom, despite numerous attempts. Bye-bye, Dakota. We have not missed you. Except that part about the gas mileage. We do miss that.

If you go past our house, the road then does turn into an actual muddy trail. It is technically a through road, to our amazement, and is shown as thus on GPS. Therefore, I am constantly re-routing people. If you follow GPS to try to access our house from the wrong side, you must cross a pretty big creek, or crick, as we hicks refer to it. Only certain hicks can successfully cross and an appropriate hick machine is definitely required. We knew it was a bad road when we had to help both the snow plow and the tree cutting trucks when they became stuck at our house last winter.

I walk down Muddy Trail with my dogs for exercise daily and it's really a lovely walk. P.S. If you are a serial killer reading this blog, I must say that it's also a perfect place to dump a dead body. Trust me, I am ever-vigilant to look each and every day for dead bodies at the creek, er crick, whichever you prefer, and luckily have only found a dead goat body so far. I don't know why I do that, look for dead bodies. I'm thinking that perhaps there's a good thriller in my head somewhere just waiting to be born. I am a writer, after all. Too bad I'm a humor writer. It might just turn out to be Ghost Goats of Muddy Trail by Cindy Brown. Oh, LOL, help us all. So in summary, I ask, do you have an interesting story about your street name?