It Doesn't Sound As Funny Once You're Used To It

The other day, Mr. Willoughby said "I miss your blog."  You know what?  I do, too.  So here I am.

It Doesn't Sound As Funny Once You're Used To It

When you've lived some place for a while, you get used to the names of cities, towns and streets around you.  Even the most ridiculous names become commonplace and you stop noticing how funny they really sound.  Even if it's just a simple case of mispronunciation.

I live in Michigan and my little town has a perfectly normal name.  Nothing funny about it at all.  Same goes for the street I live on.  But if you go to the edge of town, you'll run into a road called "Gratiot".  If you're not from this area, you may not know how to pronounce that name.  Phonetically, it's pronounced "Grash-it", but if you're giving directions over the phone, it often comes across as "Grass Shit". 

Now if you go north of my little town, you will eventually run into the town of Port Huron (we'll get to the humor behind that in a minute).  On the way, you will pass a street called  "Ankrapp".  I have no idea of the proper pronunciation, but whenever I hear someone mention it, it always sounds like "Ann Crap".

Back to Port Huron.  If you say it correctly, there's nothing funny about it, but, people with a more pronounced Michigan accent tend to say something closer to "Port Hurin" which comes across as "Port Urine" or (even worse, in my opinion) "Porch Urine".  I always wonder what happens when people who say it that way go on vacation.  In a casual conversation with other tourists: "So where in Michigan are you from?"  "We've lived in Porch Urine for the last 20 years."  Nice.

I used to work in a big office building that was located on a street called "Big Beaver".  No, I'm not kidding.  When I was a legal assistant, part of my job was scheduling depositions, so I was constantly giving out the address.  I can't tell you how many times I had to repeat and then spell the name of the street.  Everyone thought they had heard me wrong because, surely, no one would name a street "Big Beaver".

And just to make it a little more fun, we had a sculpture of a huge head in front of the building (again, not kidding).  Giving out directions sounded something like this: "When you get off the expressway, go east on Big Beaver until you see the building with the giant head."   Some people would ask if it was a human head or a beaver's head.  It was a human head.   I know you're curious, so here it is.

If you should, by any chance, be planning a trip to Michigan and you want to see more than Grass Shit, Ann Crap, Porch Urine, a Big Beaver and a huge head, you can just go to Hell.  Really, you can. 

There's a city named Hell, Michigan.  It's about 40 miles away from Eden.  I couldn't make this stuff up if I wanted to.
 

Willoughby

*All photos courtesy of Google Images.