Ben's Bridge

I am often fascinated by the names of places. All the Taylorville, Millertown, Brownsvilles are easy to figure out. Someone who founded them, or whose ego had enough money, wanted the name to be part of their legacy, which it surely was. For a while.

Then there is Chicago, named after a Native American word, chicagoua, a native garlic plant that grew around Lake Michigan. Seattle named after Chief Seattle, Malibu that was once called Maliwu, meaning it makes a loud sound, and Niagara from the Iroquoian word for strait.

Our forefathers may have brought forth a new nation, but they used some old names like New York, Boston, and Charleston, after King Charles II.

My family has a few names we all recognize too. Places like Brooke's corner, the intersection where she made a quick and dramatic entrance into this world weighing less than four pounds. Ben's bridge where my son's charge, a young husky, leaped over the bridge and was almost followed by my son who stopped just in the nick of time when he realized it was probably a twenty or thirty foot drop. Ben lived totally unscathed in the way of dogs. And The Big House, a huge old Victorian house that our family called home for five generations.

And then there are the names that seem to make no sense at all like Salt creek which has no salt in it. Maritime names for suburbs in the middle of the Illinois Prairie, And Star Ridge road which doesn't seem to have anything more to do with the stars than any other road in Canton, North Carolina. But maybe they are like Ben's Bridge, a place that once had meaning to a only a few people.