After you travel through a place many times, the picture of it in your head becomes more consolidated. That location mapped in your mind starts to develop its own set of thoughts and feelings, reinforced again and again by recollections of earlier transits. For instance, when I start to approach border cities, bestriding the River Murray, from the south, I now always think of a recently retired Collingwood long kicking centre half forward. However, I never think of that footballer, soon to try out in the NFL, when I approach the same place from the north. But when I pass through a Victorian town demanding the State Government stops stealing its water, the name and image of a woman I knew at University invariably moves to front of mind no matter what direction that hamlet is approached from
On this theme, there's a road I travel two or three times a year and it goes through a small town with its own small public swimming pool. Public swimming pools in villages are often things that show small communities are managing to do something between survive and thrive. I thought I recalled the name on the wall of the pool, a male name and surname, which presumably honoured a founder of the pool. Then one day, on another trip through this place, the given name seem to have changed, while the surname had stayed the same. Was this really true? And if so, why had it occured?
I've decided I can't innocently ask a local to confirm my recollection, but I could surreptitiously closely examine the wall of the pool to see if there are tell tale screw holes, now filled in, that might have at one time secured a different given name. Only then can I speculate on motives for such a name change. A building I once worked in was named after a formerly revered public official. However once it was discovered that this man had harassed staff, naming of an errrection in his honour was made nugatory and the building took on more prosaic street numbers and name as its identifier.
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