Or Not Le Scum

Feb. 19th, 2009 08:55 am

Figure the odds. The chance of you being a Liscomb in the US are 1 in 860,000. It’s only 1 in 800,000 in Canadia.

Liscomb distribution map

Thanks to Dynastree, we know that:

  • There are only 99 Liscomb households listed in US phone books.
  • The largest percentage (21 percent) live in Maine (of course).
  • There are Liscombs in only 23 states.
  • Besides Maine, New York is the only other state with more than 10 Liscomb households.
  • Despite being sandwiched between Maine and New York, there are no Liscombs in New Hampshire or Vermont, although I know of some ex-Liscombs in the former.
  • There’s only 356 people in the US who share my surname.

Of course, not having a land line, I’m probably not counted in their census. Nor is my mother, who has an unlisted number…

And before we leave the topic, just a brief shout-out for the town of Liscomb, Iowa and especially to the great province of Nova Scotia, which not only has a Liscomb, but also West Liscomb, Liscomb Mills, Liscomb Bay, Liscomb Harbour, Big Liscomb, Little Liscomb, Little Liscomb River, the Liscomb Game Sanctuary, Liscomb Wilderness Area, etc, etc!

Now don’t ask about the distribution about the given name “Ornoth”.

Click on the image for the full-size map, or here for the full Liscomb report, on Dynastree to generate your own.

On the topic of odds, it might be worth noting that if you buy 50 Powerball tickets every week, you would produce a likely win once every 30,000 years. Oofie!

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Livin’ Large in LiscombLand

Mar. 4th, 2007 05:18 pm

This one is two of my favorite stories. Really!

As far as I can tell, there are only about five Liscomb Streets in the US: one in Los Angeles, two in Texas, one near Detroit, and the only one anywhere near me: a tiny little side street in Worcester, Mass.

Way back when, on January 4 1989, I drove from Maine down to Massachusetts for an interview with a company called MediQual in Westborough. A couple weeks later, they’d given me my very first post-college job offer.

Inadvertent wheelie

When I next drove down it was to look for apartments. Of course the first thing I did was grab the local paper, the Worcester Telegram, to look for apartment listings (this was way before teh Intarwebs). I picked up the January 27th issue, and on page two, a picture caught my eye: the one you see (badly) reproduced at right. Apparently the driver of the sanding truck was trying to go up a really steep hill in Worcester, when his load shifted and the truck popped a permanent wheelie. It was left on its back, pointing straight up in the air!

Now that’s pretty damned funny in its own right, but if you read the caption, you’ll see that it happened on none other than Liscomb Street! Now, how improbable is it that on the one day that I went down to scout out apartments—the only time I’d ever even seen that newspaper— there’d be a picture of something like that happening on that street? C’est impossible, non?

And now for the rest of the story…

My wife and I lived in Shrewsbury for several years, only two miles from Liscomb Street. Then things started going south. One night I returned from a business trip to find Linda packing. She was off to live with a girl friend of hers. I bet you can’t guess where this friend of hers happened to live…

Yup. Linda, who had of course taken the name “Liscomb” when we married, left me and took shelter with a friend who had an apartment on none other than Liscomb Street! That must have been incredibly bizarre…

So those are my two Liscomb Street stories, both of which seem ludicrously implausible to me. It’s all a bit surreal, but every word of it is true, BIOFO!

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