New name for (late, not lamented) Rebel Drive is obvious

 Hopefully, everyone by now knows the story of Rebel Drive/Fajita Drive and I see no reason to relitigate all that mess once again. That’s history. Not pleasant history, arguably, but history. What I want to discuss here is “Where do we go now?,” and, to me, the answer to that question is obvious.

It is worth noting that the Kyle City Council named a committee comprised of every single person who applied to serve on that committee to recommend a name to replace what that less than three-mile section of FM 150 between Old Stagecoach Road and Center Street used to be called. It doesn’t mean the council has to adopt one of those names, and, from the list of names reportedly being suggested, I sincerely hope the council quickly consigns every single one of them to the nearest trash barrel. Here are, according to published reports, the eight names the committee is considering:

• Albert Taylor Street
• Dr. James H. White Drive
• Driftwood Drive
• Freedom Way
• Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
• Resilience Drive
• Silvestre S. Herrera Drive
• Veterans Drive

I doubt if anyone takes the suggestion of White Drive to replace Rebel Drive seriously, unless the goal is to make Kyle the laughing stock of the entire free world. So that name should be out the window immediately. The argument I’m hearing for Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. is that all other cities have such a street, why shouldn’t Kyle. The answer is all those other cities, for the most part, are considerably larger and far more urban than Kyle. For a city such as this one, applying the name Mahatma Gandhi Drive would make just as much sense as calling it Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.  When I hear the name Albert Taylor, I immediately recognize him as the author of A Guide to Out-of-body Experiences and that eliminates that name, in my book, unless you want Kyle associated with the word “cuckoo.” I have no idea what Silvestre Herrera’s connection to Kyle is. I associate him with Phoenix, and, in fact, a portion of 3rd Street in Arizona’s largest city has been dubbed “S. Herrera Way.” But without any discernible Kyle connection, that name should also be discarded immediately.

That leaves the four generic names and, again, I ask “Why”? The city is extremely proud, as it should be, of the Heroes Park that will be constructed near the Performing Arts Center that will not only memorialize Armed Forces personnel from Kyle killed in action, but, also, I have been assured, will include the names of any Kyle police officers killed in the line of duty, although we all hope that never happens. Kyle has an active VFW Auxiliary Post 12058 and at least twice each year the city council pauses to pay tribute to the city’s veterans on Memorial Day and Veterans Day. So we don’t need a Veterans Drive as well. When I hear “Resilience Drive,” I immediately want to know exactly what kind of difficulty has Kyle experienced that this name is commemorating the city recovered from. I don’t ever recall hearing about a tornado that leveled the place, or any other horrendous natural or man-made disaster (other than the current pandemic) that the city is well known to have recovered from. Freedom Way, to put it bluntly, is simply jingoism at its most blatant, and Driftwood either connotes another Hays County community or a piece of wood that has been washed ashore, neither of which should be associated with Kyle.

Here’s the amazing thing, however. The obvious new name for the street has been screaming at us all along and we’ve just been too deaf to hear it. The new name is already a part of the name of the road under discussion — RM 150, or, Ranch-to-Market Road 150. Although these Texas rural road designations can be traced as far back as 1937 (the very first farm-to-market road in Texas — connecting Mount Enterprise and a town that was back then known as Shiloh in Rusk County — was completed that year) a coordinated program to connect areas in rural Central and West Texas didn’t really take shape until the Texas Legislature passed the Colson-Briscoe Act in 1949. The expressed purpose of this act was to create a extensive network of roads in rural Texas to allow farmers and ranchers to bring their goods to market.

Think about that for a second and then think that the Ranch-to-Market roads, by design, have an origin at the ranch and their ultimate destination is “The Market.” And when you take that second to think about that, the new name for the street reveals itself: Market Street. It designates Kyle as “the ultimate destination” — the place where the goods and services should naturally flow.

Here are some other pluses. It naturally lends itself to other businesses that may want to locate there -- think Market Street Cafe, to cite just one example. Market Street carries none of the baggage any other suggestion is burdened with.  Philadelphia’s Market Street plays a significant role in that city’s history — some historians have even called it “the most historic highway in the United States.” Benjamin Franklin’s house was on Market Street. Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence in a boarding house located on Market Street. During their presidential terms, both George Washington and John Adams used the home of financier Robert Morris, located on Market Street, as the official presidential residence, the White House of its day. In fact, today that mansion is known as the President’s House. Spending time on Market Street in San Francisco should be on everyone’s bucket list. Market Street in the Woodlands, north of Houston, is popular shopping destination.

Some might argue Kyle already has a Marketplace Blvd., but, c’mon, that’s not the same thing and it would be on the other side of town. Marketplace Blvd. is simply not the same as Market Street.

To me, Market Street is obvious, is serious, is significant, and, overall, has far more positives and, unlike any other name bandied about, none of the negatives than anything else that has been put forth. I say, end the debate right now. This is not a life-altering event, people; it’s just a street name. Call it Market Street, be done with it and move on to items far more important.