Wondering About Names

I have been living in Taylor County for the past 25 years. I knew that I was supposed to for almost 25 years prior to that. I either sit in this business on Main Street or in the Bunkhouse at home and I listen to the quiet at home or I study things that interest me here at the shop. I am content to just do this for the rest of my life. At both locations I ponder a lot. Many of my ponderables are beyond my interests, or at least I am not interested enough to research them. I fell upon one answer at the gym last week. Believe me, I would never have invested any time in this quest if the answer did not fall upon me via a woman on the StairMaster two stations down from the recumbent bike I was currently on. (An hour on a recumbent bike takes an entire hour, BTW.) How does someone manage to braid their own hair or does it require outside input? While walking up the stairs on the device she separated her mid-back length hair into three strands and braided her own hair without missing a step. Go figure. One inconsequential ponderable off the list.

Another in the same category of ponderables that I wouldn’t spend the time researching I came across just now. I am sure that a lot of you out there spend time wondering about Street Names. Or, more correctly, whose name is it (probably was it) that rated having a street named after him or her? I am not ever going to go after “Joan” of Joan Street here in Medford. But, I now know who Whelen was of Whelen Ave fame here just down the road from where I am currently sitting and the road I travel every day when I drive to the gym.

Mr Whelen was the co-owner of the sawmill (with a Mr Roberts, without a Street) on the Black River that created the “Mill Pond” currently a part of the Medford City Park. The dam creating it is still there. The Mill Pond (see below) and the Black River downstream from it are host to a legion of waterfowl that create quite a mess when citizens feed them.