Old Cuss and Lil Cuss circa 1959.
It was late August by the time my Vermont plates arrived, three months after I moved across the river and only eight months since I came here from the Jersey Shore. My aging SUV was undergoing its final inspection. Looking her over was mechanic Frank Bullock, a man who has lived in Waterford his entire life, and his father before him, and his grandfather, and, well, you get the picture.
“Yep, we was wondering if you were going to survive living in the willy wags,” he says, taking a quick peek from behind the second-hand rear tire that a tiny, arrowhead-shaped pebble had pierced earlier that spring after I had moved to Upper Waterford. The “we” Frank was talking about was logger and my then-landlord Leonard Wright. Turns out L.J. brings his vehicles to Frank, too.
“You know what I mean ‘bout the willy wags?” he adds, gesturing with his ever-present cigarette.
Oddly, I did. His words tripped my recall of nonsensical names my father used to toss like candy during a parade: ring-tale snorter, highpantodintherunit; the giant Wing Wang, bobo rigmus, Old Cuss, Lil Cuss. To stir my memory further, I sass him back.
“Yep,” I say. “You fellas think a flatlander…a girl, at that…can’t live off road…in the woods…with a bear and wild turkeys for company.”
Frank works hard not to let a smile rippled under his mustache, and intuitively changes tact. “I got my own names for things. So does my Uncle George.” But when I press him, he shrugs. “I don’t know why. That’s just the way it is.”
Still, I wonder: Are nicknames a Kingdom tradition? Is it a way to establish camaraderie within a group spread out across acres and acres of farm fields and miles of uncut backwoods? Who starts it? And, when does a sobriquet stick and become a permanent part of the landscape?
Take the Mosquito Hollow Schoolhouse. No one in Concord recognizes the Brook School by that name, but every time we drove by the dusky red building on the Shadow Lake Road, my father would call it out and add that Aunt Ida (Richardson-Caswell who married Harley Pike) had taught there. It was until I found her obituary that mentions that school by that name that I gained any credence with the Concord historians. But, like Frank’s willy wags, was Mosquito Hollow a nickname used only by the Pikes?
In Tall Trees, Tough Men Dad introduced loggers who accepted him into their fraternal circle but without giving him a nickname that I’ve been able to unearth. Certainly, though, many personalities captured by their monikers. Take Roaring Bert and Grinner Schoppe.
“I only knew my great-grandfather by your father’s book and what others said about him,” Joan Weston tells me over the phone from St. Johnsbury. An avid genealogist, Joan tracked down the original Hessian who came from Germany as an 18th century mercenary, had a change of heart after he was wounded, and sided with the American colonists against the British. In Maine, the family name is spelled the original way: Schope. Come down a couple of generations and across state lines, and Winfield Schoppe makes his appearance.
“But here’s what I do know,” Joan continues, “We’re all like him. All the Schoppes are good-natured. We abhor violence. Unless we’re pushed too far, then watch out!”
Joan’s referring, in part, to the legendary showdown between the loudmouthed Ingersoll and the genial Grinner. Anyone wanting to know more about that famous Schoppe lore and his natural affinity for the woods can check out the exhibit at the Canaan Historical Society Museum through next spring.
With the exception of that weathered Russian emigre and old Connecticut Valley Lumber Company logger Tom Cozzie calling my father "Pikey" in front of me, I never knew of a nickname for my father. When I was a kid, though, Dad called me by a roster of nicknames. One, in particular, stayed with me because I think there’s more behind it than the funny sounds made when uttered out loud.
“You’re Daddy’s little Lallapalooza.”
That’s five nickels worth of syllables for a word that shows up in three places, I found out:
* No. 19 in the sci fi series titled Tom Swift and His Big Tunnel published in 1916 when Dad would have been in high school;
*Heart of a Goof by English humorist satirist P.G. Wodehouse that came out in 1926, a year after he got out of Dartmouth, and lastly
*in a Three Stooges short.
Dad wasn’t into films, so I’m going with literature.
But which one? Tom Swift lived with his widowed father in the fictional town of Waterford, NY in a series launched in 1910 by the Stratemeyer Syndicate (same company that published the Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys and Bobbsey Twin series). The Wodehouse collection skewers golf, an athletic pursuit Dad didn’t hold in too high a regard, despite my imaginative attempt to connect a cant dog to a nine iron. No, I would say the loggers have it over the golfers because a year after college he was still spending time in the woods.
But getting back to Frank, whose Uncle George still calls him Butch from when he, himself, was a kid, he’s telling me a story about the nickname he’s given his grandson. The tyke is called Lil Bit.
“He didn’t like,” Frank says. “But once I told him he doesn’t call me Grandpa – ‘You call me Bubba’ - he accepted it.”
Frank paused.
“I don’t know what I’m going to call him when he gets to be a teenager.”
Note: Got a nicknames that comes with a story? I'd love to hear from you for a project I'm working on! Send e-mail to Helen@HelenPike.com. Thanks!
The original version of this Pike Log appeared in print in The Northland Journal. To meet the November publication deadline, it was written in September.
“Yep, we was wondering if you were going to survive living in the willy wags,” he says, taking a quick peek from behind the second-hand rear tire that a tiny, arrowhead-shaped pebble had pierced earlier that spring after I had moved to Upper Waterford. The “we” Frank was talking about was logger and my then-landlord Leonard Wright. Turns out L.J. brings his vehicles to Frank, too.
“You know what I mean ‘bout the willy wags?” he adds, gesturing with his ever-present cigarette.
Oddly, I did. His words tripped my recall of nonsensical names my father used to toss like candy during a parade: ring-tale snorter, highpantodintherunit; the giant Wing Wang, bobo rigmus, Old Cuss, Lil Cuss. To stir my memory further, I sass him back.
“Yep,” I say. “You fellas think a flatlander…a girl, at that…can’t live off road…in the woods…with a bear and wild turkeys for company.”
Frank works hard not to let a smile rippled under his mustache, and intuitively changes tact. “I got my own names for things. So does my Uncle George.” But when I press him, he shrugs. “I don’t know why. That’s just the way it is.”
Still, I wonder: Are nicknames a Kingdom tradition? Is it a way to establish camaraderie within a group spread out across acres and acres of farm fields and miles of uncut backwoods? Who starts it? And, when does a sobriquet stick and become a permanent part of the landscape?
Take the Mosquito Hollow Schoolhouse. No one in Concord recognizes the Brook School by that name, but every time we drove by the dusky red building on the Shadow Lake Road, my father would call it out and add that Aunt Ida (Richardson-Caswell who married Harley Pike) had taught there. It was until I found her obituary that mentions that school by that name that I gained any credence with the Concord historians. But, like Frank’s willy wags, was Mosquito Hollow a nickname used only by the Pikes?
In Tall Trees, Tough Men Dad introduced loggers who accepted him into their fraternal circle but without giving him a nickname that I’ve been able to unearth. Certainly, though, many personalities captured by their monikers. Take Roaring Bert and Grinner Schoppe.
“I only knew my great-grandfather by your father’s book and what others said about him,” Joan Weston tells me over the phone from St. Johnsbury. An avid genealogist, Joan tracked down the original Hessian who came from Germany as an 18th century mercenary, had a change of heart after he was wounded, and sided with the American colonists against the British. In Maine, the family name is spelled the original way: Schope. Come down a couple of generations and across state lines, and Winfield Schoppe makes his appearance.
“But here’s what I do know,” Joan continues, “We’re all like him. All the Schoppes are good-natured. We abhor violence. Unless we’re pushed too far, then watch out!”
Joan’s referring, in part, to the legendary showdown between the loudmouthed Ingersoll and the genial Grinner. Anyone wanting to know more about that famous Schoppe lore and his natural affinity for the woods can check out the exhibit at the Canaan Historical Society Museum through next spring.
With the exception of that weathered Russian emigre and old Connecticut Valley Lumber Company logger Tom Cozzie calling my father "Pikey" in front of me, I never knew of a nickname for my father. When I was a kid, though, Dad called me by a roster of nicknames. One, in particular, stayed with me because I think there’s more behind it than the funny sounds made when uttered out loud.
“You’re Daddy’s little Lallapalooza.”
That’s five nickels worth of syllables for a word that shows up in three places, I found out:
* No. 19 in the sci fi series titled Tom Swift and His Big Tunnel published in 1916 when Dad would have been in high school;
*Heart of a Goof by English humorist satirist P.G. Wodehouse that came out in 1926, a year after he got out of Dartmouth, and lastly
*in a Three Stooges short.
Dad wasn’t into films, so I’m going with literature.
But which one? Tom Swift lived with his widowed father in the fictional town of Waterford, NY in a series launched in 1910 by the Stratemeyer Syndicate (same company that published the Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys and Bobbsey Twin series). The Wodehouse collection skewers golf, an athletic pursuit Dad didn’t hold in too high a regard, despite my imaginative attempt to connect a cant dog to a nine iron. No, I would say the loggers have it over the golfers because a year after college he was still spending time in the woods.
But getting back to Frank, whose Uncle George still calls him Butch from when he, himself, was a kid, he’s telling me a story about the nickname he’s given his grandson. The tyke is called Lil Bit.
“He didn’t like,” Frank says. “But once I told him he doesn’t call me Grandpa – ‘You call me Bubba’ - he accepted it.”
Frank paused.
“I don’t know what I’m going to call him when he gets to be a teenager.”
Note: Got a nicknames that comes with a story? I'd love to hear from you for a project I'm working on! Send e-mail to Helen@HelenPike.com. Thanks!
The original version of this Pike Log appeared in print in The Northland Journal. To meet the November publication deadline, it was written in September.