July 29, 2018

Wait. "Shed Legacy" is a terrible name for a city.



Here's the article Drudge links to, "City report on Confederate monuments raises idea of renaming Austin."

I'm just laughing because Meade read the Drudge line to me out loud and I couldn't understand the last 2 words, which I assumed were the new city name people wanted. When he said it more clearly "Shed Legacy," I had a genuinely hilarious fraction of a second of thinking of "Shed Legacy" as the name for a city.

ADDED: My willingness to see Shed Legacy as the name for a town comes in part from just recently having read this, in Bill Bryson's "Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States":
There is almost nothing, it would appear, that hasn’t inspired an American place name at some time or other. In addition to breakfast foods and Shakespearean plays, we have had towns named for radio programs (Truth or Consequences, New Mexico), towns named for cowboy stars (Gene Autry, Oklahoma), towns named for forgotten heroes (Hamtramck, Michigan, named for a Major John Hamtramck), towns that you may give thanks you don’t come from (Toad Suck, Arkansas, and Idiotville, Oregon, spring to mind), at least one town named for a person too modest to leave his name (Modesto, California), and thousands upon thousands of others with more prosaic or boring etymologies (not forgetting Boring, Maryland).
And here's Mental Floss's compilation of "The Funniest Town Name in All 50 States":
3. ARIZONA // WHY... This teeny-tiny community near the U.S.-Mexico border is named after the Y-shaped intersection of two nearby highways. But because of an Arizona law requiring place names have at least three letters, "Y" became... "Why."...

8. DELAWARE // CORNER KETCH... from a rough-and-tumble local bar, whose patrons were so quarrelsome that townspeople would warn strangers, "They'll ketch ye at the corner."...

17. KENTUCKY // BUGTUSSLE... when workers helped out during the harvest, they would sleep in barns—on hay that was infested with doodlebugs... the workers stayed so long that the bugs grew big enough to “tussle” for the prime napping spots....

22. MICHIGAN // HELL...  In the 1830s, the town settler, George Reeves, made a deal with local farmers to trade his homemade whiskey for the grain they grew. When the farmer’s wives knew their husbands were off dealing with Reeves, they were known to remark, “He’s gone to hell again.”...

35. OHIO // KNOCKEMSTIFF...  When approached by a woman asking him how to keep her cheating husband home and faithful, the preacher responded simply: “Knock ‘em stiff.”...
Imagine the origin story for the town of Shed Legacy. There was a shed, a popular trysting spot, and many of the town's original residents were born of mothers who got pregnant there. People got to pointing to that shed and joking that the entire population of the town had come from that shed. The town was the Shed Legacy. And the name stuck.

103 comments:

rehajm said...

Shed Legacy is a great name for a new HGTV show.

Bob Boyd said...

All Papa left me was this here ol' rake and half a quart of motor oil.

Earnest Prole said...

No joke, I first read it as Shred Legacy.

rhhardin said...

Tears are the most popular thing shed.

Bob Boyd said...

Professor Suing Nyu to join faculty of Shed Legacy Community College and Carwash

Etienne said...

Ciudad de Legado, Texas 78704

mccullough said...

The Woke in Austin should be clamoring for the whole state to revert back to Mexico and for Mexico to purge itself if Spanish influence. But you can’t put the shit back into the horse. These people are fucking illiterate idiots.

Mid-Life Lawyer said...

I had just read that story and then clicked on Althouse and found it here. Shed Legacy is a cool name, though, regardless of the idiocy of the whole white-wash history movement.

campy said...

Ocasio-Cortez, TX has a nice ring to it.

William said...

If you are committed to constantly reinventing yourself just like your parents and their parents before them, you have a shed legacy. My family's motto is never remember, or something like that. I forget the exact words.

Tank said...

They like to think they are weird there. Why not rename the city Weird, TX?

Actually, they're not as weird as they think.

Roger Sweeny said...

I distinctly recall Bugtussle being mentioned on The Beverly Hillbillies.

tcrosse said...

Name it Obama Legacy, which would otherwise disappear and be forgotten.

Rick.T. said...

They could do better than Difficult for Tennessee. Why right near me alone we have Fly, Bucksnort, and Gobblers Knob.

I have a framed picture of the Fly Cemetery sign.

Etienne said...

Los Cobertizos, 78704

Paul Zrimsek said...

This is not something a place with that many hipsters in it should even be considering. They'll end up being called City McCityface.

mockturtle said...

"Woke" would be a good name for Austin. Let's hope Houston never becomes woke.

Ann Althouse said...

@Bob Boyd

LOL

Professor Suing Nyu never gets old.

Anonymous said...

mccullough: The Woke in Austin should be clamoring for the whole state to revert back to Mexico and for Mexico to purge itself if Spanish influence. But you can’t put the shit back into the horse. These people are fucking illiterate idiots.

No doubt most of the useful idiots who go along with this nonsense are indeed shamefully historically illiterate. That's a satisfactory explanation for why it's so easy to manipulate them into going along with it. But more disturbing are the people who aren't historical illiterates, who have shown themselves willing to be led by the nose by vicious cultural vandals, because they're too busy preening as "principled conservatives" to recognize an enemy when he's at the controls of the crane swinging a wrecking ball at their house.

The people who cooked up this culture-purging movement in the first place aren't historically illiterate, and know exactly what they're doing. And what they're doing does not spring from moral scrupulosity about the Confederacy and slavery.

Sal: Spain's conquest of the Americas included a lot of bad behavior, especially by today's standards. I propose that no Spanish be taught or spoken in Shed Legacy's schools.

I get the impression that the average woke moron thinks that Spanish is an indigenous New World language. See "fucking illiterate idiot", above.

mockturtle said...

Angle-Dyne coins the term vicious cultural vandals. I like it. We could call them 'VCV' for short.

Tom said...

There are way better names in The Commonwealth of Kentucky:

Science Hill

Fleming Neon

Morehead

Big Bone Lick State Park

Beaver Lick State Park

West Liberty (which is 150 Miles northeast of Liberty)

Pippa Passes

Whitesburgh and Blackey (neighboring towns)

And Knob Lick

dreams said...

I like Cub Run, Ky where I grew up.

Loren W Laurent said...

""They'll ketch ye at the corner."..."

I hear that in the Bob Dylan "Rainy Day Women 12 & 35" voice.

--LWL

Etienne said...

My Dad used to drive the back roads to Boring, Oregon for our Saturday country drive. It was his favorite spot, because there was a general store on one side of the street, and a tavern on the other.

So us kids would hang out in the general store as he got drunk in the tavern.

The store had a talking Mynah bird. There was also a list of things you could say to the bird, and he would say them back.

In all the times we went there, that bird never talked. We used to steal candy the whole time, and eat it in front of the stupid bird.

My oldest brother would drive us home, which was exciting, as dad slept in the backseat. Good thing we never got pulled over, but there was only one Sheriff every 50 miles back in those days.

Sebastian said...

"Ocasio-Cortez"

So it's OK to carry the name of the arch-imperialist, the bringer of indigenous doom, when you're a socialist?

I suggest we shed Anglo legacies just as soon as Latin America and Latin Americans shed their Spanish legacy.

Fernandinande said...

CO has No Name, and "Fly Cemetery" is a Brit name for sticky buns...hmmm.

Austin ... said if slaves were freed, they would turn into “vagabonds, a nuisance and a menace.”

Shades of W. E. B. Du Bois. But nothing like that happened in real life.

As an example, let's look at recently freed slave Brion Oaks, the chief equity officer of the newly established Equity Office...

Oops - the austintexas.gov website is dead (apparently Austin spent their money on the Equity Office), but private enterprise tells us:

As chief equity officer, Oaks will head an office of two or three staffers who will focus on working with community groups to identify disparities in city programs and services while also brainstorming ways for city departments to address those gaps."

Brion isn't a vagabond or a menace, but he is being a nuisance by misusing the "Equity Office" to yap about road and town names when he was tasked with and paid for identifying and addressing "gaps".

Loren W Laurent said...

Towns invoked in Dylan songs: an interactive map, here.

I would love to hear hims sing a song about a denizen of Bugtussle, Kentucky.

Dylan has used "bug" in a lyric. "Froggie Went A Courtin’":

Next to come in was a juney bug, Uh-huh,
Next to come in was a juney bug, Uh-huh,
Next to come in was a juney bug.
She brought the water jug, Uh-huh.

But Google says no on him using "tussle". Mildly surprised, there.

However Dylan Thomas used "tussle" in "Ballad Of The Long-Legged Bait ":

But heard his bait buck in the wake
And tussle in a shoal of loves.
Now cast down your rod, for the whole
Of the sea is hilly with whales,

She longs among horses and angels,
The rainbow-fish bend in her joys,
Floated the lost cathedral
Chimes of the rocked buoys.

Of course, "Now cast down your rod, for the whole / Of the sea is hilly with whales" could easily be a Bob Dylan lyric. Which brings us here:

"I was riding on the mayflower when I thought I spied some land
I was riding on the mayflower when I thought I spied some land
I yelled down to captain arab, I'll have ya understand,
Who came running to the deck and said boys forget the whale
We're goin' over yonder. cut the engines. change the sails.
Haul on that bowline we sang that melody,
Like all tough sailors do when they're far away at sea."

So, that.

-LWL

tcrosse said...

It is a fact universally acknowledged that they could just change it to Austen.

Rusty said...

Goobies, Dildo and Come-by-Chance. Al towns in Newfoundland Canada.

Tommy Duncan said...

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet." Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

Quaestor said...

How about Stalingrad, TX? Disgruntled Austinites in the Age of Trump should find that name comforting?

rehajm said...

Shed: Legacy, now on XBox

TerriW said...

There's a town in Minnesota not far from where I grew up called "Coon Rapids."

They once had some sort of contest, taking submissions for a name change. My dad submitted "Coon River."

(It's still called Coon Rapids.)

Kate said...

I honestly wondered, based on your headline, if Austin had some kind of important history regarding storage units.

Hey Skipper said...

Dunmovin, CA.

But England has to be the world leader for quirky town names: Horton-cum-Studley, and Bishop's Finger, for two instances.

Danno said...

TerriW, I ride the Rush Creek Trail to the Coon Rapids dam and beyond to the Mississippi River Trail every year or so.

JPS said...

There are two very famous chemists from Possum Trot, Kentucky.

Phil 314 said...

City named for a primary color: Amarillo.

Yellow what?

dreams said...

Horse Cave, Ky tried in the late 1800s to change their name to Caverna but it didn't take though the high school and elementary school are named Caverna.

Crimso said...

Where does it stop? Memphis will have to change its name, and any references to Memphis (think: songs) will have to be scrubbed. Remember: "Doin' right ain't got no end."

John henry said...

 Sebastian said...

"Ocasio-Cortez"

Ocasio is the hispanicized version of O'Casey.

One oc the reasons that the term hispanic is so laughable is because of how few can trace back to Spain.

There were several times as many Irish wo colonized South America as Spaniards.

And several times more Italians and Germans.

I hope aoc gets elected. Maxine is aging and will need a replacement soon. Strictly for comic relief.

John Henry

John henry said...

If Austin becomes Shed Leg, it can be contracted to Shleg.

John Henry

John henry said...

Phil,

I thought Amarillo was named for fried bananas. Yum!

John Henry

gilbar said...

I've thought for so time that all of Travis county should change their name to:
We're not Texans, we're Californians
I know it's kinda a long name; but, it's SO TRUE

Meade said...

How embarrassing it must be to live in a city named after a slave owner. For instance, I could never live in Dodgeville, Wisconsin.

Rick.T. said...

For those like Hey Skipper noticing quirky English town names:

The drive from the town of Much Wenlock to Ashby-de-la-Zouch is 60 miles east across the English Midlands. Once you have crossed the River Severn and passed the Wrekin rising to the left – the last of the Shropshire Hills – you join the M54 at the Wrekin Retail Park. At Featherstone, you have a choice: north and then east past Lichfield and Tamworth, or southeast past Walsall, Wednesbury and Birmingham, south of Sutton Coldfield, and northeast to cross the River Tame. Either way, once you’re past Appleby Magna and crossing the River Mease, you’re almost there. Be sure not to make a wrong turn and end up in Donisthorpe, Newton Burgoland or Snarestone.

And just like that, in an hour and a quarter, you will have covered the great sweep of British history: from the Celts through the Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Scandinavians, and Normans to modern times – all as displayed in Britain’s place names. (You can check out our map, not meant to be exhaustive, of some of Britain's stranger names at the bottom of this page).

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20160309-why-does-britain-have-such-bizarre-place-names

Meade said...

Almost as embarrassing as renaming oneself Muhammad (slave owner) Ali.

Rich in Soquel said...

I cast a vote for this Althouse post and comments as best of the year. Reading it will help those suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Bob Boyd said...

I'm still dealing with dog hair even though the dog's been dead for years.
Shed legacy.

David Begley said...

They better not change the name. That will totally wreck my upcoming country hit song, "Coyotes of Austin" performed by Aaron Copeland.

David Begley said...

Names of some Nebraska villages. I've been to most of them: Funk, Colon, Wynot, Gross, Beaver Crossing, Nora and, of course, Mead.

There's very good Greek food in Mead. Meade should have stopped in Mead on his way back from Colorado, but noooo. Must drive through Nebraska on I-80. No stopping in beautiful Nebraskaland.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

My favorite street name is in between Sequim and Port Angeles. "Kitchen Dick"

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

How many parents named their kids "Austin" because is sounds hip and cool?
Now they too should change their names. Do it for your SJW neighbor.

Get the t-shirt

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

Meade - 100%

Yancey Ward said...

The capital of Texas.....Hillary!, Texas.

Meade said...

If you like your racist name, you can keep your racist name.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

Hillary! and Stalingrad --
Those are the best choices for new names.

I'd add Che-ville or Red Lipstick Socialism

Wince said...

“Shed Legacy” could commemorate the landmark First Amendment parody case of Falwell v. Hustler Magazine.

Yancey Ward said...

Lol! I just Googled "Hillary, Texas" to see if there was already a town in Texas called "Hillary", and the top search results were all the articles from October of 2016 that were salivating/daydreaming at the prospect of Hillary! winning Texas in the 2016 election.

That made me smile thinking of all those article writers today baking sourdough bread and working crossword puzzles.

Anonymous said...

mock: Angle-Dyne coins the term vicious cultural vandals. I like it. We could call them 'VCV' for short.

Thanks. Now that you mention it, it would make a good username. It would even go with my current avatar.

Curious George said...

Ex-Bear QB Jay Cutler was born in Santa Claus, Indiana.

Sam L. said...

There's a Boring, Oregon, too. (Not gonna look thru the previous posts.)

William said...

Slavery existed for most of recorded history. It's kind of discriminatory to pick on just white, North American slave owners. The family of Josephine Bonaparte owned huge, sugar cane plantations in the West Indies, and Napoleon sent an army to re-enslave the citizens of Haiti. It's long past time for the French to start erasing Napoleon's name from their boulevards and avenues.

William R. Hamblen said...

Kentucky also has Sugar Tit (which was a lump of sugar wrapped in cloth and given to a fussy baby - now you know why the people from Sugar Tit have no teeth). Not far away are Beaver Lick (a lick is a mineral spring where deer and buffalo licked up salt) and Bigbone (no explanation needed). Nashville, Tennessee, was French Lick in the early 18th century. The French hunter in question was Jacques-Timothée Boucher, Sieur de Montbrun or Timothy Demonbreun, whose descendents still live in the area.

buwaya said...

Being raised in an ex-colony I have seen a lot of this.
Or rather, we have seen generations of it.

Manila is an old city, older even as an outpost of European culture than any in North America. It even had its own distinct creole language, once, complete with poetry and song.

But politics have changed the landscape, streets, plazas, districts lost the names of the first colonizers or heroes of that period, Azcarraga, Aranda, Legazpi, Goiti, replaced in some cases by those of the next set, Dewey, Harrison, Taft, Lawton, and then by, usually, some dead native politician. This was aided by the swamping and replacement of the proper ancient Manilenos by provincial outsiders that were not of the city and were not attached to the local customs and were unrelated to the local families.

This is the dynamic you see in Austin, and elsewhere.

todd galle said...

First, the name change would drive the Post Office crazy. They standardized place names sometime, too lazy to check, but probably around the time the railroads did the same with time. This standardization is why most towns ending with '...burgh', became '..burg', with Pittsburgh being one of the few survivors. Secondly, PA has some great town names. For instance, one can pass through Blue Ball in order to get to Intercourse.

William said...

Okay, it was hypocritical for Washington and Jefferson to preach equality and own slaves. But couldn't the same thing be said about Mohammed. He was for abolition when it came to alcohol and usury, but he took a nuanced view about owning slaves. He preached for their ethical and humane treatment, but had nothing to say about the ethics and humanity of owning a slave........What about John Knox? He was one of the founders of Sotch Presbyterianism. He didn't own slaves. He was actually a slave, and a galley slave at that. If there was anything that would inspire me to take a strong stand against slavery it would be a past position as a galley slave. I'm not that familiar with Knox's teachings, but I get the impression that, after his ransom, he was more into dour Presbyterian stuff than the abolition of slavery.......Offside question: was Knox more morally blind than Jefferson or Mohammed?

n.n said...

How about something anodyne: 101110111001 or something more diverse: 1011101114021

Comanche Voter said...

Well I have passed through Lower Wallop, Middle Wallop and Upper Wallop in Hampshire. And of course there's the English town of Little Dorking. (I'd say that's a special place for transgender people).

And then I first heard Loudon Wainwright's "Dead Skunk In The Middle of The Road" while driving through the hamlet of Gnaw Bone Indiana.

Seeing Red said...

Bowie, Tx.

They’ll probably rename it Santa Ana.

Seeing Red said...

Santa Anna.

PuertoRicoSpaceport.com said...

Blogger William said...

Slavery existed for most of recorded history. It's kind of discriminatory to pick on just white, North American slave owners.

Africans sold into slavery outside Africa between @900 and 1900 - 100 million (estimate)

Africans sold into slavery within Africa in that period, another 100 million.

Africans sold into slavery in South America and the Caribbean @10-11mm

Africans sold into slavery in the US, about 900,000.

Percentage of Africans sold into slavery in the US as % of total - 900m/200mm = 0.45%

This in no way excuses us.

John Henry

PuertoRicoSpaceport.com said...

Re napoleon, slavery and Haiti, at it's height Haiti had over 500,000 African slaves. That's an area less than 1/6 the size of Wisconsin.

Madison's own Mike Duncan in his Revolutions podcast devotes a whole segment, about 35 30-40 minute eps, to the Haitian revolution. Very interesting

revolutionspodcast.com

John Henry

Hey Skipper said...

[Rick Turley:] For those like Hey Skipper noticing quirky English town names:

I lived in Oxfordshire for seven years -- Duns Tew (just down the road from Great Tew, as should be obvious), was one village I lived in. Not too far from Hinton-under-the-Hedges. In Tackley, some school teachers of my acquaintance shared a place at 5 Butts Rd.

We, of course, called them The Butts Sisters.

Paul said...

Well the liberals could name it Stalingrad, or Pelosigrad... Maybe Maxinegrad!!

But being here in Texas and being a born native Texican I can say no way in HELL will it be renamed.

buwaya said...

Texan independence from Mexico, and related symbols of ethnic identity, don't matter to the present residents of that city, as they are largely newcomers with no attachment to these symbols. These names and symbols are those of a despised alien people.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

I vote they call it Shuck Jive.

Oso Negro said...

@ John Henry - some seek a cogent and nuanced permission structure to forgive themselves for the behavior of some of their ancestors hundreds of years ago. Others just don’t give a fuck.

O said...

In Chicago the Shed Legacy is tanks of dead beluga whales.

O said...

In Chicago the Shed Legacy is tanks of dead beluga whales.

Big Mike said...

One of the problems of living in a town where a colony of bats under one of your bridges is a major tourist attraction is that eventually everyone becomes bat shit crazy.

gadfly said...

If quiz show host Ralph Edwards can get Hot Springs, NM to change its name to Truth or Consequences and Mountain, WV to become Mole Hill - the sky's the limit on name changes - so I vote for High Sky, or perhaps Sky King, TX.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Cmon. Truth Or Consequences, NM (where I spent one memorable night) is a heckuva name.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Jeez. Missed it by that much!

Anonymous said...

Ciudad del Tontos works for me.

Bunkypotatohead said...

Just cut to the chase and rename it Niggerville.

rehajm said...

You got all the town names that incorporate 'the' in he name?

Deb said...

I don't think you can beat Climax, Toonigh, or Shake Rag, Georgia.

Pettifogger said...

Austin should adoot its nickname as its official name: People's Republic.

Pettifogger said...

Texas has many cool town names: Red Gate, Point Blank, Cut and Shoot, Uncertain. The most credible explanation for the latter name I've heard is that the developer had not settled on a name when he filed the subdivision plat, so he wrote "uncertain" in the field for "name."

Bricap said...

Now I know why Why is called Why. Driving through it on the way to and from Rocky Point as a kid, I always figured the name was as in the vein of "Why here?"

tcrosse said...

You got all the town names that incorporate 'the' in he name?

You could start with Los Angeles, Las Vegas, La Crosse, etc. etc.

LilyBart said...

We should get rid of the democrat party - the party of the KKK and opposition to the Civil Rights amendment.

narciso said...

Fascinating buwaya do you know an azcarraga became prime minister in the tale end of 19th century spain

buwaya said...

Thats the Prime Minister who Calle Azcarraga was named for.
He was a "Filipino" - a Spaniard born in the colony.
A fellow much like myself in fact. A Manila boy.

A homeboy who got the top job back in the Penninsula.
Also helped that he was a hero of various domestic and foreign campaigns.

Michael K said...

Texan independence from Mexico, and related symbols of ethnic identity, don't matter to the present residents of that city, as they are largely newcomers with no attachment to these symbols.

Austin is the San Francisco of Texas. They may have more drunken DAs than SF.

Michael K said...

Well I have passed through Lower Wallop, Middle Wallop and Upper Wallop in Hampshire.

I have been to Upper and Lower Slaughter in the Cotswalds.

I have also been to East, West , North and South Stroudsburg in PA and East, West, North and South Thetford VT

RichardJohnson said...

Pettifogger
Texas has many cool town names: Red Gate, Point Blank, Cut and Shoot, Uncertain.

Here is a song about Texas towns.Never Left the Lone Star State.

Achilles said...

73 68 69 74 68 6F 6C 65

The techie hipsters will get it.

For the non-techie hipsters.

JAORE said...

Screamer, Alabama? Nah. Try Slapout. (Like KY, we have a Bugtussle too.)

JAORE said...

If my last name was Jefferson or Washington, or Lee, or..... should I immediately be seeking a woke substitute?

mikee said...

Shed Legacy is a thing in Austin already. The city allows a Single Family Residential House on a lot to have an Additional Dwelling Unit added on the same lot, with lots of regulatory caveats about protected trees and city fees and percentage of ground covered by building. The old shed out back is now a 1000sqft two story that sells from $350k to $550k east of I-35, mere minutes from downtown, in the former Black and Hispanic neighborhoods there.

Yechiel said...

For me, nothing beats Medicine Hat, Alberta.