NAME YOUR STREET

Your street must have a name so that fire trucks, ambulances and police cruisers can be sure of finding it in response to any 911 emergency call. And if your street doesn’t have a name, you and your neighbors may name it.

Here are some of the curious street names that have appeared on Mount Desert Island, where 911 calls go to a dispatcher in Bar Harbor: Long & Winding Road, which was taken from a popular song; Easy Street, which is the easiest way to get from one side to the other of Hall Quarry on Somes Sound. Sally Merchant says the only problem is that kids have been stealing the signs.

W.I. Pojereno seems to be a composite of the names of residents. Fitz Hugh Lane in Mount Desert – Jim Clunan, a retired Foreign Service officer, says when he had to come up with a name for his road, he happened to glance at an old book of paintings by a 19th-century marine artist of that name.

S.H. Lane is nearby. According to David Allen, skipper of the mission ship Sunbeam, his father had a horse barn at the top of the hill. The horse droppings were so numerous that folks called the dirt trail Horse S– Road. That name was too much for the town fathers, so residents settled for initials, reversing them possibly because one resident used to collect S & H green stamps. One Lane Road, over near Pretty Marsh, probably was given that name to discourage tourists from wandering in.

Marie Jacques, the state addressing and database manager, can’t remember the location of Memory Lane, another candidate for sign theft. Even better was the town that chose to name one of its streets Lois Lane. Ms. Jacques sometimes gets complaints about proposed street names, but she has no reviewing authority and just sends the dispute back to the town for resolution.

The renaming of streets is mostly completed, and Maine’s emergency call system already operates in more than 90 percent of the state – all but most of Hancock County, Aroostook County, and the town of Lincoln. Hancock plans to be up and running by July or August, and Aroostook hopes to meet a December target date.

Complications remain, however. In Penobscot County, Bangor, Old Town and Lincoln have not yet opted to go into the regional dispatching system. Bangor is approaching a decision and would save about $200,000 a year if the Police and Fire Departments transferred their dispatching service to the county. But that would mean the police station might be closed at night, and the county would have to hire additional dispatchers.

In Old Town, a 911 call goes directly to the local dispatcher, not to the regional office in Bangor, and probably will continue that way. In Lincoln, any 911 call goes to the Bangor regional dispatcher, who takes the information and calls it back to the Lincoln fire or police department. So the fire and police chiefs ask people to call a local number in an emergency.

Although Lincoln wanted to continue to do its own dispatching, the town has completed renaming streets and renumbering addresses. Ruth Birtz, the town tax assessor who doubles as addressing agent, hears complaints at the office, at home, and at the supermarket and expects more as notifications of the new addresses are going out. “Nobody likes change,” she says.

But she gets a chuckle over some of the names, for example the names for three roads that lead to one of the town’s 10 lakes. A resident named them for his three golden retrievers – Hoover, Benjie and Rin-tin-tin.