My Own Drive

It never occurred to me until today to see how many streets around the country have the same name as the one I live on. A couple of hundred, it seems. Then I thought, in a not-so-rare moment of self-regard, how many streets named "Dees"?

Not as simple a question as it sounds. According to the site I used, there are streets named -- among others -- De Dees and Dee Dees, Dees Cemetery, Dees Home, Dees Pond, Elmer Dees, Gunn Dees, Mance Dees, Old Dees, R Dees and Six Dees. But there is also a category simply called "Dees," so I looked into that further, and 84 streets so named are listed in 23 states. That's streets, roads, drives, lanes and so forth.

That's a lot of Dees-named thoroughfares. So large and variegated is the world that, in the course of visiting 47 states over the years, I've never seen one of them. I think I would have remembered if I had. (I have, however, seen Stribling Street in Philadelphia, Miss.)

In Illinois, there's exactly one -- a Dees Drive, in a burg called Monroe Center. Which isn't far south of Rockford, meaning it isn't too far from where I live. My first impulse is road trip. Soon I realize that I'll wait until the next time I'm in that part of the state to seek it out. Someday, though, I'm going to drive on it: Dees drives on Dees Drive.