When I saw April Fools Day on a calendar recently, it reminded me of a cruel joke played years ago upon newcomers to the Newton area.
The design of the city of Newton’s street-naming system seems simple enough. It’s four quadrants — all “avenues” running east-west, “streets” running north-south, with the name of the direction both before and after the number and type of street.
I like to think of myself as a reasonably intelligent person, but I certainly don’t feel like one when navigating Newton’s main grid. Despite the apparent simplicity of the design, kept basic specifically to keep over-thinkers like me from getting confused, the pavement, gravel and soil manage to keep me from staying clear on directions for very long.
It’s not clear how I can remember trivia, such as all the songs on Queensrÿche’s 1991 album, in order, and which ones were on Side A or B of the cassette, and cannot distinguish between streets and avenues. A person who can remember entire episodes of TV shows like “Emergency!” or “What’s Happening?” clearly has the capacity to navigate an Iowa town’s grid.
The four-word names of the streets and avenues have become my nemesis — a cadence of directions, names, streets and avenues that seems to have been created for the sole purpose of confusing newcomers for decades to come. In fact, the intent of the design might have been to confuse only me, and perhaps a few select others.
One might think a fairly standard system would hardly target a reporter who wasn’t even born until the 1970s, but when that reporter is trying to rapidly locate and get to a Newton address, a conspiracy theory quickly comes to mind. Newton’s system is hardly unique, and that is another frustrating element.
A simple grid, similar to ones that I have successfully navigated with little assistance, would seem to be no challenge for even the most map-impaired, yet I get streets and avenues mixed up all the time. Phoenix, Ariz., has a similar system of numbered streets and avenues that intersect.
One would think a city of 1.5 million people would be a tougher place to navigate than 15,000-population Newton — especially considering my earliest visits to one of the hottest cities in North America was when Phoenix had a huge grid in the northeast part of town, uninterrupted by highways or freeways.
Newton would seem to be easier to navigate than Phoenix — yet I find more trouble remembering intersections and locations in central Iowa than in the heat and sand of Arizona. Maybe I was thinking about the 110-degree temperatures so much that I wasn’t focused on the street names.
In the movie “Tommy Boy,” David Spade grills Chris Farley about a phone number. He interrupts Farley’s response by asking “Wait — did I hear a ‘niner’ in their somewhere?” That’s how I feel sometimes in locating a Newton address. Someone might as well be rattling off map coordinates or tail numbers of aircraft, because I’m not picturing or catching all the details.
I joke with co-workers that I’ll be heading to the “corner of happy and healthy,” using the Walgreens advertising slogan to basically give up on explaining where I’m headed.
One fortunate aspect of Newton is that it would be tough to get lost on the grid, as following a main numbered roadway should lead you — one way or the other — toward the center of town.
Maybe my comical confusion will eventually fade, and I’ll be able to rattle off street names as easily as those who were born here. Until then, I’ll try not to name any intersections that don’t exist.
Contact Jason W. Brooks at 641-792-3121 ext. 6532 or jbrooks@newtondailynews.com.