I don’t know where this post is going because, quite frankly, I had a bottle of wine for dinner at a nice little restaurant in St. Cloud called Jules. Local ingredients, sandwiches, salads, and pizza. But they have this date night deal for appetizer, pizza, and bottle of wine for $30. My wife is pregnant, so I got the bottle of wine. Huzzah! She gets to drive.

Anyway, we are staying at the house of her friend, here in St. Cloud. They live on Lief Erickson Place. Or is it Leif Erickson Place. I don’t’ know right now. There are three street signs for this street. Two spell it Leif and one spells it Lief.

Our GPS takes it very seriously. If we ask for Leif Erickson Place, it takes us one way. If we ask for Lief Erickson Place it takes us another. I am not kidding.

So, intoxicated as I am, I have begun my quest for the truth, as I may find it.

Here is it, as it is.

MapQuest spells this road Lief Erickson Place. Now the two important things to note are the “ie” in Lief, and the “ck” in Erickson.

Now, the Scandinavian explorer spelled his name — assuming that he could write it — Leif Ericson, or really, Leifr Eirīksson, if Old Norse didn’t use runes.  But whatever. So, already, I find that kooky since Leif Ericson’s dad’s name was spelled Erik: note the “k” not the “c”. Have you checked out already?

To muddy the mud, if you go to the web site for St. Cloud’s Leif Erickson Day celebration, you will find his name spelled Leif Erickson in the header, and Leif Ericson in the content text.

Now another kink in this kooky chain is that there is a Leif Erickson who was an actor in the first half of the Twentieth Century. His main claim to fame is that he was married to actress Frances Farmer. Then on the day he and Frances divorced, he married another actress named Margaret Hayes.

The street I am presently on is called either Leif Erickson, or Lief Erickson. But, the actor Leif Erickson was born in Alameda, California, so I’m pretty sure it wasn’t named after him.

Also, the other streets around her are named Cortez, LaSalle, Lewis, and Clark. I have to go with explorers, right?

Granted, there is also a street in this neighborhood called Pierz. I checked this out and it’s named after Father Francis Xavier Pierz, a Slovenian born Catholic priest, so even the once clear explorer theme is called into question.

I love wine.

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