THE OTHER DAY Mona Lisa Quesadilla was struck by a sign she saw as she made her way through the world. There, in the fair city of Orange (some say the fairest city of all in the O.C.), the venerable Chapman Avenue meets a not-so-venerable street named: Trails End. That's right, no apostrophe.
Trails End.
She believes that the lack of an apostrophe renders the sign a declaration rather than the typical locale observation often found in other signs, say, for example, Hill Top Drive or Santiago Canyon Road.
So, it is not Trail's End as in the end of the trail or even Trails' End as in the end of trails.
It is Trails End as in, the trails, all of them, are over, kaput, finis.
It's an announcement.
Mona Lisa finds herself agreeing with the sign, even as she shakes her head.
What can she say? Mona Lisa loves the O.C., the sense of doom she finds in even an innocent street sign, unsure of whether it marks the end of nature, the end of punctuation, the dearth of thoughtful, detail-oriented urban planners, or all of the above. Who's in charge of street names anyway? Where does she sign up for that job?
To close, a poem by Billy Collins who once remarked that the massive signs announcing new housing developments seemed to him to serve as epitaphs for the creatures and fauna who previously resided there. The Golden Years
All I do these drawn-out days
is sit in my kitchen at Pheasant Ridge
where there are no pheasant to be seen
and last time I looked, no ridge.
I could drive over to Quail Falls
and spend the day there playing bridge,
but the lack of a falls and the absence of quail
would just remind me of Pheasant Ridge.I know a widow at Fox Run
and another with a condo at Smokey Ledge.
One of them smokes, and neither can run,
so I'll stick to the pledge I made to Midge.
Who frightened the fox and bulldozed the ledge?
I ask in my kitchen at Pheasant Ridge.
