Well, you can just pray to Jesus, but there are prayers to Baby Jesus, Jesus on the Cross, Jesus at the Last Supper, Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus as Judge at the end of the world, etc.
Calling on Mary under her various titles is partly a nice courtesy (“Hey, thanks for coming to La Vang and helping support Jesus’ Gospel! I really get a lot of help when I think about that appearance of yours!”) and partly is just fun and fitting and interesting.
If you love someone and you have a poetic turn of mind, you will probably have a zillion different nicknames and compliments and injokes for the ones you love. Heck, even people’s dogs have tons of different nicknames (although the dog is only going to answer to one, he will probably figure out that you’re talking about him with the other names). So it’s natural that Mary, one of the most popular and beloved women in history, has about as many names as we can possibly pile on her.
When Mary appears somewhere, she’s making a point on behalf of her Son. But it also allows people in that area to feel that she’s specially theirs and loves them particularly. She’s their hometown girl. So a lot of people have special pride in the apparition particular to their area, or the statue or painting of Mary that is locally associated with healings and miracles, or similar stuff. People love Jesus, but they like to love Him personally. The same thing is true of our brothers and sisters, the saints. What is closer to us tends to be closer to our hearts, and we are more impressed by what we know by personal experience.
So basically, localizing Mary by a particular title or appearance is helpful to a lot of people. If it’s not helpful to you, you don’t have to do it; but you shouldn’t be scandalized by something that’s been pretty normal throughout the history of the Church.
And your neighbors around town sound like really nice people!
