Keep fertile away from intercourse

Today, We Honor The Overall Man Classic Bill Mead

Reprinted with permission

One of the things I like best about my home town of Tehachapi is its one-of-a-kind name. I haven’t heard of another Tehachapi anywhere in our galaxy.

I also take perverted pleasure in the fact that Tehacgapi doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue. I always look forward to calling in a catalog order and hearing the sharp intake of breath as our town’s noble name pops up on the monitor. One time the order clerk went entirely off the line. I’m convinced she walked off the job rather than wrestle with T-e-h-a-c-h-a-p-i.

Perhaps because we come from a town with a memorable name, my wife and I like to savor odd-sounding place names during our travels around the country. We see them on road signs and maps everywhere, suggesting that Americans are more imaginative than most other people. It’s true that nearly every state has communities with repititous titles like Bloomington, Decatur, Springfield, Buffalo, Brooklyn and others, including Altoona. I’m alert to Altoona because I went to a country school near Altoona, Iowa. I was fully grown before I learned that some city in Pennsylvania had stolen the name. Or maybe it was the other way around.

I have no idea how most towns got their bizarre names. The exception is Peculiar, Missouri. A former resident of Peculiar once told me that when the founders sent in a petition for a post office, giving the place one of the typically overused names of the period, the postmaster general wrote back that they should consider another name, one peculiar to the region. After scratching their heads, the settlers decided if a high government official wanted to name their town Peculiar it wasn’t their place to object.

I would give anything to know what led to the naming of Intercourse, Pennsylvania. On second thought, I probably don’t want to know. It’s enough to point out how fortunate we are that Intercourse is a long ways from Fertile, Minnesota.

Mulling over the names of American towns disproves the poetic notion that a rose by any name would smell as sweet. If the guy who wrote the 1940s song “The Last Time I Saw Paris” had come from Bad Axe, Michigan, what do you think would have happened to his career?

Pouring over my altas, I have to wonder if legumes are a diet staple in Gas City, Indiana. Did the folks who named Ninety Six, South Carolina know about Eighty Four, Pennsylvania? It sounds suspiously like a case of one-upmanship. What caused the Cheesequake in New Jersey? In Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, are there serious consequences for fibbing? It would be a dangerous place for me, with my creative approach to reality. Are they able to field a respectable basketball team in Dwarf, Kentucky? I’m told that a lot of people in Liberal, Kansas are closet conservatives. Can you be Carefree in Arizona or is that just an Assumption (Illinois, that is).

My wife and I make a game of inventing plausible, if far-fetched, yarns about how these towns got their names. But we are totally stumped by Scalp Level, Pennsylvania. Could this refer in some way to the sort of flattop hair style I wore as a teenager?

The name that disturbs me the most is Athol, found in both Idaho, and Massachusetts. If I called for a number in either place and the operator asked, “What City?”, I would sound like I was saying a dirty word with a lisp.

If you don’t know Bill: Bill Mead was the longtime publisher of the Tehachapi News, along with Betty Mead, his wife and partner of more than 50 years. Known for his keen wit, which could be gentle or scathing or somewhere in between but was often self-deprecatory, Bill’s writing won him a wide following among News readers. His column “The Overall Picture” ran in the News for more than 25 years, and in 1999 he published a collection of his columns in a volume entitled The Napa Valley Outhouse War. His book is currently available for sale at the Tehachapi Museum for $10.

Bill had a remarkable mind and because of his intelligence, humor and appearance he was regarded by many as Tehachapi’s Mark Twain. As Betty used to remind him, he was “older than the oldest Model A Ford” and his wealth of life experiences and rural upbringing allowed him to bring a thoroughly American, 20th century perspective to his reflections and musings on the everyday. Bill passed away in 2008 but his writing lives on.

[Publisher’s note: I read Bill’s articles during the 80s, 90s, and 20s and I am grateful to share them now with our current readers. I hope you enjoy this touch of nostalgia as much as I do.]