If you live in Massachusetts & someone says “Charlestown” you think, okay, I know where that is, it’s that impossible to get in or out of little nook next to Boston. Fair enough.
But if you live NEAR Rhode Island or are in RI & someone says “Charlestown” & you think of that little nook, you are thinking of the wrong Charlestown, bitches! I didn’t think King Charles (either of them, or any of them, were there 3? How many got executed? Chuck I & II? I’m fuzzy on my monarchy from the 1600s, what of it??) was popular enough to merit all these cities & towns being named in his honor. At the very least you’d think they’d change the name after they lopped off his head. “Hear ye, hear ye, good residents of Charlestown, due to the king’s treason as decided upon by the great Lord Protectorate Oliver Cromwell, this fair city shall now be called Olivertown or Cromwellville, a vote shall be taken by all land owning men on the morrow. Fare thee well.”
For weeks, my mentor/instructor/audio engineering teacher has mentioned his summer place in Charlestown right on the water. MA’s Charlestown is by water so that’s where I thought he was talking about. He showed me a picture of a house on his street & I thought, hmm, that looks more like Marshfield than Charlestown but maybe there’s parts of C-town that I’ve never been to. It’s possible, I don’t go there often except for that time I temped there for 3 months & then it was just in & out during traffic times. Thought, get out of me head. Done.
Anyway, I recently was talked about said temp job with my mentor & he asked which C-town, MA or RI, I was referring to, I was like the original one in MA, duh! Then he said I think the original one is in South Carolina, to which I replied I think that’s technically Charleston not CharlesTOWN, this making all the difference & he was like, I dunno.
But I’m right, aren’t I? SC has Charleston, NC has Charlotte (the feminine of Charles, I know). How did we run out of names for places so quick when we were founding this country? I know we “borrowed” a bunch of names from England but that’s ok, England was a whole ocean away & not easy to get to back then. Plus, the colonists often stuck a “NEW” in front to distinguish.
/rant over.
