A
town by any other name would be less confusing
February 25, 2004
I've often wondered whether the residents of Rome, Ga., or
Paris, Ky., are inconvenienced by the fact that larger places
exist with the
same name. I know it is a problem in New London, N.H., where
my wife moved in
1953.
Once, when my computer cable connection went
out, I had to spend
quite a while convincing the person at the telephone help desk
that I was in
New Hampshire, and not the much larger city of the same name
in Connecticut.
Some years ago friends were coming to visit
from Mexico, and
they had clear directions: After arriving at the Boston
airport, go to the
Greyhound bus terminal in Boston and take the Vermont transit
bus to New
London, N.H.
We got a telephone call from them: "We're
here!"
"Where is 'here'?" we asked.
"The bus station in New London."
Our New London is not big enough to have a bus
station, and the
bus stop, on the town green, is less than a mile from our
house. But the
Mexican girls had managed to get to New London, Conn., and had
to take the
Greyhound bus back to Boston and then the Vermont transit bus
up to New
Hampshire.
On the second try, they made it.
I had become acquainted with similar-sounding
places in other
countries even before I moved to New Hampshire in 1977. In
1971, I was on leave
from the University of Kentucky (in Lexington, not too far
from Paris) and had
occasion to lecture at the University of New England, in New
South Wales,
Australia. (On the way I passed through the village of
Kentucky, New South
Wales.) This was years before St. Francis College in Maine
changed its name to
the University of New England, and a few years before I went
to work at New
England College, in Henniker, N.H., a town that proudly
advertises itself as
"the only Henniker on Earth."
All of this makes me appreciate the occasional
small miracles
performed by the post office. (My wife and I travel enough to
make life hard
for our letter carriers. We know some of the troubles letter
carriers face.)
When they are on the address, ZIP Codes do
help. A letter once
arrived in New London for a stepson. The envelope had been
badly torn, and all
that was left of the address was "Thomas N" and the ZIP Code,
03257.
Despite the fact that the family name didn't start with N, and
Tom wasn't old
enough to get much mail, the package somehow arrived on our
doorstep.
Internationally, even postal codes don't always
help. When my
wife and I were working in the Faeroe Islands, we found
letters from the United
States arrived two weeks sooner if people wrote a note on the
envelope telling
the postmaster a route for the mail. (Looking at a map
suggests the Faeroes are
near Iceland, but the plane carrying mail comes from
Copenhagen.)
A few times I've had a chance to watch postal
magic performed. A
fellow student at Kenyon College had a very common name - on
the order of
"Steve Clark." He'd been in the Peace Corps in Ghana, and one
of his
pupils there had sent him a letter - addressed only to "Steve
Clark,
Canyon College, USA." In the early 1960s, only a couple of
colleges had
"Canyon" in their names, and the letter had notes from their
mailrooms on it. The most recent one said: "Not here, try
Kenyon
College." It took a while, but the letter arrived.
It's probably easier to explain the arrival of
a letter received
by Einar Hille, the distinguished mathematician with a
distinctive name. After
he retired from a long career at Yale, he held visiting
appointments at a
number of other universities. A friend in Italy, knowing that
he'd left Yale
but not sure where he was, addressed a letter to "Prof. Einar
Hille, Not
Yale University, USA." It was successfully delivered, to the
University of
New Mexico. I've seen the envelope.
And, once, I was able to help. In the early
1980s a letter
arrived at my office at New England College. It was postmarked
in Indonesia and
addressed to someone with another extremely common name I
can't recall. The
full address was "Department of Chemical Engineering,
University of New England."
Consecutive notes on the envelope read "Try
USA,"
"Try Boston," and "Try New England College, Henniker, NH."
Well, for once my strange travels turned out to be just what
was needed: I knew
that only one likely school had a department of chemical
engineering, and I
sent the letter on to the University of New England, Armidale,
NSW 2351,
Australia.
Remarkably often, the mail does go through.