The Winner of the First Annual, Weekly, Bi-weekly, Monthly or Whenever I Get Around To Awarding It Contest for Best Street In Mentor Goes To...

The winner of the First Annual, Weekly, Bi-weekly, Monthly or Whenever I Get Around To Awarding It Contest for Best Street In Mentor goes to … envelope please … Cadle Avenue. 

Accepting the Award for Best Street in Mentor is … me. "Cadle Avenue would like to thank all the little people who made this Best Street in Mentor Award possible."

If you don't know about Cadle Avenue it's because you've not been paying attention. It's that cut-through street you use when you want to avoid the traffic light at Mentor Avenue and Center Street.

It runs north off Route 20, two blocks west of Center Street. Cadle Avenue doesn't like being a cut-through street because drivers who use it as a cut-through street tend to be in a hurry, and then they race down Cadle Avenue and that means the Mentor Police have to bring out one of those traffic calming devices that flash your speed and show you that you're speeding and this slows people down for a while but they eventually return to their speedy ways.

This endangers Cadle's roaming cats and squirrels.

In addition to being a cut-through street, Cadle has a slew of features that make it the Winner of the First Annual, Weekly, Bi-weekly, Monthly or Whenever I Get Around To Awarding It Contest for Best Street In Mentor. It has cute little old-fashioned curbs. Those cute little curbs keep the lawn edges neat and control rain water. 

And Cadle Avenue is lined by mature and maturing maple trees. You can't have a great street if you don't have mature trees. There are some god-ugly streets in Mentor -- yes, Newell Creek we mean yours -- that will be much prettier 20 years from now when the street trees grow up.

All those mature and maturing maple trees play havoc with the sidewalks.  Cadle's sidewalks rise and fall like the August Dow Jones. That bumpiness is a small price to pay for a proper tree lined street.

Cadle also has a well-kept variety of interesting houses with attractive architectural styles. It's got kids bikes and trikes laying in front yards. It has Black Labs sleeping in the grass. Impatiens grow in pots. American flags hang on porch posts. Bird feeders feed birds. Cats crouch beneath yews, eyeing careless chipmunks.

Cadle Avenue has it all.

If you'd like your street to be considered for the First Annual, Weekly, Bi-weekly, Monthly or Whenever I Get Around To Awarding It Contest for Best Street In Mentor write us here and tell us why.

And don't forget to check out in Friday's Patch.