Namely

A story about names

ran into Jimmy Johnson the other day. You know who I mean, the owner of J J’s Boar and Gill, down on Fifth Street, across from Hair’s To You. He’s a tall fellow with a Fu Manchu. He’s generally as happy as a lark, a Pollyanna, if you know what I mean. But on this occasion he looked dejected. So I asked him, “Jimmy, what’s the problem? You look like you’ve lost your best friend.”

J J stared at me with glum and glassy eyes and mumbled, “Ty died… died.”

“Ty died?” I shot back.

“Ty died… died,” he repeated.

“Well, I’ll be, Ty died,” I responded sympathetically. “The poor soul. That’s tragic.” Then I thought about it. “You know, I don’t think I know anybody named Ty.”

His faced puckered with grief. I thought he was going to bawl. Again, between gasps, he blurted, “Ty died… died.”

I put a hand on his shoulder and puzzled for a moment. “But let me think. There was a Ty in the local history. Yes, many, many decades ago. He was known as Ty the Prince of Pines, the legendary frontiersman who many years ago first settled this God’s country. Yes, I remember him. He owned most of Jefferson County, they say. He died in the Gay Nineties. Why would you grieve him now?”

Poor Jimmy Johnson still couldn’t speak. He shook his head “no,” bit his lip and managed, “Not him.”

“Of course, not him.” I studied his glassy eyes for a clue. “Hmmm. He did have a son,” I recalled. “He and his wife, Priscilla Ann Marie Beth, had a daughter and a son. They say the girl, Bunny, looked like the mother. The son had some biblical name like Aholibamah. So everyone just called him Ty’s son. But he’s been dead a long time, too.”

Jimmy looked up at the sky and rubbed one eye with a knuckle. All he could manage was, “No, no.”

“Not Tyson?” I puzzled, briefly looking up also. What was he trying to say? “Let me see. Tyson did start a town. He inherited a great deal of land from his father and built the three story Happy Heaven Hotel. A couple of friends opened the Mailey Brothers’ Bargain General Store. The Dancing Pig all-night dance-hall saloon was built next door. When they put in a post office it became a town. Tysonville, they called it.”

“Not Tysonville,” J. Johnson said, more with his hands than his mouth.

“Yes, you’re right. It couldn’t be. A fire broke out in the back room of the Loyal Citizen Gazette and destroyed the original town. They rebuilt it with help from the G. N. & C. T. Railroad. Over the years it’s grown, yet kept its charm. That’s when it became New Tysonville. It’s not far from here, this side of the Maynard S. Gilmore Jr. Interstate Freeway, south of the Little Gray Rock River.”

“Not the town.” His chin quivered, but he could say no more.

“Not the town of New Tysonville? Then you must mean the road to New Tysonville? That would be the county road that runs north all the way to the Knights of the Holy Word Reformed Services Church Hospital. They call it the New Tysonville County Road. One stretch of it is lined with majestic eastern white oaks and tall shag bark hickory trees. Breathtaking in Indian Summer, except for those AmerGenCon Power and Gas Company utility lines. So what’s that road have to do with anything?”

“The school.”

“I see. You are referring to the academy on that road. The boys school, four miles outside of South Saint James Township, on the Shiawappicancoppi Ridge, across from the U-Wash-N-Dri KarWash Centre. The New Tysonville County Road Academy for Boys.”

“Football team,” Jimbo stuttered.

“Their CSSA Conference Class C football team? Yes, they have some fine talent this year. A hard running junior corner back by the name of Muhammed Ali Afr. I believe last year they won the Barnabas ‘Pops’ Ikle Memorial Invitational Playoff Award. The Roaring and Scoring Black Panthers, that’s what they’re called.”

“The what?” Jimmy J. asked.

“The New Tysonville County Road Academy for Boys Roaring and Scoring Black Panthers football team,” I answered.

“The dog,” he squawked.

“Their mascot? You mean that beautiful male Jack Russell terrier? The one that won the County Fair Annual Blake Weston Blue-Ribbon Best-of-the-Breed Cat and Dog Show. That dog?”

“Yes,” he squeaked.

“The New Tysonville County Road Academy for Boys Roaring and Scoring Black Panthers football team Jack Russell terrier mascot named Tie-Dyed?” I asked. “What about him?”

Jimmy Johnson burst into tears.

My eye brows rose as I muttered, “Well, I’ll be, Tie-Dyed died.”