In the town of Blackduck, Minnesota, not far from the Hungry Duck Restaurant, a stone’s throw from Bogarts Service Tire Shop, an easy walk (I expect) from the Cease Family Funeral Home, runs a street named Northern Road, a street I have never come close to having been on. My inkling is that this street connects to other streets reasonably well. That its structure mostly holds up to the heavy traffic of squirrels that travel across it from the Petersons’ oak tree. Of course, it is my understanding that there might be no such oak tree, and maybe nobody named Peterson lives on Northern Road in Blackduck, Minnesota. I am only guessing. I have never been on this road.
It might be an above average road, I am deciding to assume. But I could be wrong. It might get grimy after heavy spring rains, but whether or not this is a problem depends on your footwear. And it might very well be no problem at all, for if you were to solicit feedback from the Blackduck street cleaning staff, they could potentially rank Northern Road as high as the top five roads in Blackduck, Minnesota. You’d think this would be reason enough for the people of nearby towns to journey the asphalt of Northern Road in droves, and yet my assumption is that it is traveled very close to the right amount. It is empty when it needs to be, I hope, and full (but not too full) when the occasion calls, I hope. It might fill up with snow a little more readily than its neighboring roads. I actually have no idea if that’s true, though. I want to be absolutely clear that I have never been on this road ever in my entire life.
There are rumors that people will turn and walk one block south from Morris Avenue in order to walk, briefly, on Northern Road. But those are only rumors, and I am making them up. And I am also aware, unreliably, that just as many people walk one block north from Northern Road in order to spend more time walking on Morris Road. I expect this would be likely to cause some measure of rivalry between those strollers of Northern Road and those amblers of Morris Road. I don’t know any of these people, so I am not able to ask them.
When everything is said and done, does Northern Road in Blackduck, Minnesota get you where you need to go? First of all, I would like to thank you for asking me, specifically. And second of all the answer is yes, it certainly does, for all I know, particularly if you have been on it, which I have not.