We Speak Your Name...

I have become fascinated by Barkevious Mingo. “Keke” as he is called, was drafted by the Cleveland Browns in the just completed 2013 NFL Draft. I’m not all that interested in his stats or the “speed he’ll bring to the Browns defense.” It’s his name. Barkevious Mingo...it sounds like a name Elmore Leonard might make up. But frankly, it is so far out there, so unimpeachably unorthodox, so faintly illuminated by the light of the distant sun, that no one, no matter how brilliant, could make up this name. The best names I could make up were “Gunther Littlechurch,”  “Tilman Hopkirk” and “Desire Slaughter.” I like the name Desire.

And Barkevious Mingo is not the only unusual name in the NFL. The previous title holder was D’Brickashaw Ferguson, of the New York Jets. D’Brickashaw? Barkevious? What in the  name of mild sanctification is going on? What brute could look at their sweet, innocent little newborn and decide that "D’Brickashaw" was a good name? Or "Barkevious?" And their wives actually went along with this? On the night Barkevious was born, did the neighbor’s dog keep everyone up and the Mingos took this as a message from the spirit world  what to name the baby? How did the nurses who filled out these birth certificates keep a straight face?

I once heard that basketball player Anfernee Hardaway was supposed to be named Anthony, but his mother spelled it “A-n-f-e-r-n-e-e.” Anfernee it is then...

To top this all off, I stumbled upon nameoftheyear.blogspot.com, where they were tallying votes for the Name of the Year. It was a throwdown between Barkevious Mingo, and a young woman named Iris Macadangdang. 

Barkevious Mingo won, 54% to 46%.

More Moniker Madness

If you can believe what you read on the internet, there are 750,000 people in this country named Thomas Davis. That's a whole slew of us Thomas Davises. There was a Congressman from Virginia named Thomas Davis. There is a linebacker for the Carolina Panthers named Thomas Davis who besides playing football, recently designed and debuted a submarine sandwich called the "Big Hit." In Dublin Ireland there is a statue of Thomas Davis. I recently spent a rainy Saturday afternoon looking at online mug shots from all over the country of people named Thomas Davis.  I was surprised; not a lot of big time crime. Most of the Thomas Davises had been busted for being drunk, drugged up, or for unseemly comportment with women.

Tom, Tom, Tom Tom, Tom Tom Tom...really?

Well, I’m here to tell all 750,000 of you Thomas Davises that there are two towns in West Virginia named Thomas and Davis that are so close together that you see “Thomas Davis” on the map. Look in the northeast, near where western Maryland hooks over the W. Va. panhandle. Odds are some of you 750,000 Thomas Davises already know about this but your writings on the subject have not come to my attention.

Many of you readers might already be aware that in 2011, I rode my motorcycle 1400 miles total from Chicago into the mountains of West Virginia to visit Thomas and Davis.  But you probably don’t know that  this trip was the culmination of a lifelong quest. 

I have known about Thomas and Davis since I was eleven years old, attending Belmar Elementary School in Pittsburgh. My sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Daley told me about them. Mrs. Daley was best known for bouts of red-faced, high-volume apoplexia directed at anyone unfortunate enough to have gotten her pissed off. Her tirades were often followed by merciless ear pulling, and vigorous swatting of the buttocks with a long wooden paddle. And yet I have quite fond memories of her spasmodic version of the ”Twist,” accompanied by the lyrics: “Do it!!...Do it!!...Do...your...homework!!!”-all delivered when appropriate, at ear-splitting levels, a deranged smile on her face, elbows flying, accompanied by the swish of her flowing 1960‘s-era skirt. She cared a lot about her students and she was willing to whack some booty as well as shake her groove thing to get us to do well in school.

I was quite surprised one day while exiting her classroom, to have Mrs. Daley stop me and tell me that she had been thinking about me all weekend because she had spent the weekend in between two little towns in West Virginia named Thomas and Davis. I was shaken. Mrs. Daley hardly ever paid attention to me except to loudly express her disapproval of my bird call skills. After I got over the initial shock of not being yelled at, mangled, or beaten, when I got home I looked at a map of West Virginia and sure enough, there they were: Thomas and Davis.

After I moved on to middle school, I never heard anything more of Mrs. Daley. I have to assume that at some point, she got down with the “Twist” one last time, straightened her skirt and walked out of Belmar Elementary for good. Maybe she spent her final years living near Thomas or Davis.

For the next forty years, this knowledge of Thomas and Davis became something to joke about, or something to impress drunk girls in bars. It was insider knowledge that my name was on the map. It made me feel special. I took this feeling with me from Pittsburgh to San Francisco. While working at KPIX in the eighties, I even remember seeing on a CBS network sports feed, murky videotape of a motorcycle enduro race that had taken place in Thomas or Davis. There was a guy in a crowd in one shot who fixed his eyes on a point in space, jerked his head out and snapped his teeth together as if he was snatching a fly out of the air with his mouth. 

I don’t remember when I decided to actually go to Thomas and Davis, but this journey became something of an obsession. For years and years I would get out our huge world atlas, crack it open to the map of West Virginia, and gaze longingly at  Thomas and Davis. When we moved from San Francisco to Chicago, the obsession deepened because now I was closer. When could I take the time to go? How would I get there? Who would I go with? What would I find there? Would some backwoods meth cook kill me for trespassing and bury my corpse in a shallow grave in some remote defile? What if I fell in love with a vegan hippie chick that sold crystals out of a small shop and I spent the rest of my life making dreamcatchers? I had to know.

So in May of 2011 I packed up the motorcycle and I rode there. First I went to Covington, Virginia to visit my aunt Evelyn Spurlock in the little town where my mother grew up. I had not been there since I was about fifteen years old. I also visited Joe, Marsha and Jordan Kristoff in Grottoes, Virginia. But Thomas and Davis were ultimately my goal. And I was quite pleasantly surprised by what I found there.

Evelyn Spurlock

Thomas and Davis are located high in the mountains amidst state and national forests. Surrounded by pristine land, the area is a summer haven for kayakers, mountain bikers, motorcyclists, hikers, hunters, fishermen, and, with 200” per year of snow, a winter destination spot for skiers. Both towns featured ample lodging, good places to eat and drink, and little boutique craft shops. Instead of pickups with gunracks, the place was infested by Volvos and Subarus with Washington D.C. license plates and canoes lashed to the roof.

See? There's a Volvo!

Thomas, West Virginia

Then came God’s little inside joke.

I have had quite a few close encounters with the health care system over the last few years. Lately, not so many. One of the things that has consistently bugged me is this.

When you go to a new doctor, they have you fill out a form. They ask for your last name, then your first name, etc. You fill out the form, turn it in to the receptionist and wait. After a few minutes, someone else will call you for your examination. But repeatedly, they would call “Mr. Thomas? Davis Thomas?”  This happened all the time. I mean come on! These are your forms! Don’t you read them before you give them to people? Davis Thomas!?!? Don’t you think that sounds weird?  Wouldn’t you figure this out after, like, the second form you read? I complained about this long and loud to anyone who would listen.

The radiation clinic got my name wrong. The office where I got chemo got my name wrong. The surgical units got it wrong. The robots that leave voicemail messages reminding me about appointments got it wrong. I got so exasperated that I thought about changing my name to Davis Thomas. Then they might get it right. But I have since calmed down. It would be a lot of work to officially get everything in my life changed to Davis Thomas.

So, while touring these eponymously named little towns, I went by the local middle school. And what was the school called? “Davis Thomas Middle School.” Oh, I thought, this is rich! I was suddenly overcome with a sense of elation. A smile spread over my face and I took lots of pictures of the sign. I couldn’t explain it, but was this what I had come to find? I felt like I  I had found my own personal treasure trove of irony, hidden away in the piney woods of West Virginia. Thomas Davis had obsessed over Thomas and Davis, seethed over being called "Davis Thomas" and had finally come to Thomas and Davis only to find another "Davis Thomas." I had to laugh out loud. Good one God! 

And at that moment I knew that somewhere, ghostly Mrs. Daley was looking down, smiling her deranged smile, dancing her spasmodic “Twist”,  elbows out and her diaphonous skirt swirling around her ankles, yelling "Do it!!...Do it!!!..."