So I checked the house number on the porch. Then I had to drive three blocks just to find a street sign, because every single one of them was turned. I thought, Surely there aren’t three streets named Broadway. But in this town, who knows.
I finally marched into City Hall and told the clerk, “I live at 210 Broadway.”
She stared at me like I’d just announced a UFO landing. “Who moved?” she asked.
How should I know—and who cares? “I don’t know,” I said. “My address is 210 Broadway.”
She squinted at me. “Where is Broadway?”
The City Hall clerk. Asking me. Where her own street is.
I smiled politely and said, “I’m assuming the three signs that say Broadway are just turned, and the street out front is Broadway.”
She nodded slowly, like she was solving a math problem. “Oh. Hmm… Who are your neighbors?”
I had been in town for five minutes and she was asking me questions like I’d lived there since the Eisenhower administration.
“They really don’t like strangers,” I thought. “I must be the first one she’s ever encountered.”
So I said, “Mr. Turner is my landlord. He’s on the west.”
She let out a huge sigh of relief. “Oh! You live in the Fields’ house.”
I did not know who the Fields were. I would soon learn.
Turns out the Fields were currently in jail for having an old‑fashioned gunfight across Broadway with the guy across the street. Not a metaphor. Not an exaggeration. A literal shootout like it was 1883.
Anytime someone asked where we lived, we’d say, “Fields’ house,” and they’d launch into the same story about the gunfight. Every. Single. Time.
Our official address—printed right on my utility bill—was:
“One block south of the post office, two blocks west, middle of the block.”
Not a number. Not a street. Just… directions. Like we lived in a corn maze.
And that’s when I realized: I hadn’t just moved to a small town. I’d moved into a geographical suggestion
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