Sidewalk Poetry #58: Ode to the Street System of Southwest Minneapolis

When you are beset by doubt,
Take Lyndale Avenue due south
Where you can put your mind at rest,
Knowing all the streets run east and west
And all are perfectly numbered.
(There is, of course, no Twenty-third.
It was logically omitted to make
Thirtieth come out as Lake
Instead of an odd Thirty-first or -second.)
For years, successful men have reckoned
By this system, trained the self
To follow Lyndale and hang a right
At Fiftieth, into a neighborhood
Where homes are stable, children good,
Earnings are high and soundly invested
In products Consumer Reports has tested,
Where life is not paranoid, moody or radical,
But Republican, Lutheran and Alphabetical.
Aldrich, Bryant, Colfax, Dupont:
You can put your trust upon't
When hopes are few and times are hard -
Emerson, Fremont and Girard.
Humboldt, Irving, James and Knox:
This our foundation, these our bedrocks.
While Logan, Morgan, Newton, Oliver and Penn
Justify the ways of man to men.
There is order in the promise
Of Queen, Russell, Sheridan, Thomas.
O do not stop or make a turn
At Upton, Vincent or Washburn,
Knowing by then the system meaneth,
Past Xerxes, York, we'll reach our Zenith.
Be thankful this is not St. Paul.
There is no sense to it at all.
Where the Church, for all its spiritual and temporal powers,
Permits a jungle of streets named after trees and flowers.
Where a Minneapolis person can only look up to the heavens
As, driving in Eighth Street, he finds himself on Ninth and then on Seventh.

[by Garrison Keillor. h/t to Steve.]

[A store in Linden Hills.]