What's in a Name?

We recently made a trip up to Devil’s Fork State Park for some camping and kayaking. Like nearly all our trips out of town we headed up Interstate 26 for about three hours. When we chose to move to Columbia one of things that drew us to the area was that it was centrally located – just a few hours to the beach or a few hours to the mountains. We now find that while there are many things to love about Columbia one of the problems is that it is a few hours to the beach and a few hours to the mountains. While the distances have remained the same, our perspectives have changed.

The kids pass the time on the road in a variety of ways. They enjoy listening to their i-pods, drawing, writing stories, or making up games. This past trip they decided to keep a tally of the different license plates they saw along the interstate. There were a collection of plates from Kentucky, Tennessee, Florida, and Georgia. There was even one all the way from Wisconsin.

I pass the time differently. I find that I break up the monotony of the road by reading all the signs along the way. When we lived in Missouri there were highway signs littering most of the roadways. You couldn’t go more than a half a mile before you’d be bombarded by a series of over-sized advertisements. It seems by the sheer number of billboards advertising them that every rural Missouri town must have built their economy, in part, on the sale of walnut bowls and antiques.

South Carolina is a bit different. Better really. There are not nearly so many signs. In fact, you can go for tens of miles and see nothing but the interstate and an endless stream of tall green pine trees. So in place of the missing billboards I find myself reading the exit signs instead. Every few miles you find the names of the nearby towns that are hidden behind the curtain of trees lining the roadway.

My favorite town name in Missouri was Knob Lick. You could barely say it without some juvenile snickering. I always wondered if the people there were embarrassed to live in a town with such a ridiculous name. Knob Lick. How does a name like that even come to exist?

I once played for a little league baseball team that was named for our sponsor – Miller’s Meats. It was printed in large letters across our chests. The guys on the other teams had a field day with this. It seems the word meat, with its double meaning, is extremely funny to ten year old boys. I can only imagine what the wrestlers for the Knob Lick wrestling team must have to endure.
My favorite town name here in South Carolina can be found along I-26. The name is much better:  Prosperity. Here’s a town that was obviously, at some point, looking to drum up some new residents. Or maybe the town’s founders were just that optimistic.

We’ve never stopped to see Prosperity. I’d like to believe it’s a small oasis with a quaint downtown area that is still perfectly intact. The deputy probably even carries a single bullet in his pocket just in case he ever needs it.

I imagine there are no deserted gas stations hidden amidst a forest of overgrown weeds, rusted out trailer homes sliding off their foundations, or crumbling buildings- all of which are very common in small town South Carolina. I imagine it must be very nice there.

And for that reason I’ll never allow myself to pull off the interstate to find out.  If I did, and it was a dump, I'd be so disappointed. It would just serve to prove that names mean nothing. And if this were true then I'd be far less excited to one day visit places like Crapstone, England,  Shag Harbor, Nova Scotia, or even Hell, Michigan.