Town of Little Names

I.

Simon Ambrotos had worked in a printing shop since he was barely out of his teens. The shop was located on the second floor of a brick flatiron located at the convergence of five streets, each named after historical figures. 

In the two hundred plus years of the town's existence, the street names changed as societal norms evolved. The street Simon took to get home, for example, began life as Rufus T. Baker St., the town's first mayor. But when it was discovered that Rufus T. Baker had shot his neighbor's dog in the foot for barking all through his daughter's wedding, the town elders banned his name from being spoken. 

Some of the more popular, but nonetheless short-lived, names include Hamilton, Jefferson, Adolf, Charles Barkley, and Kevin Spacey. 

During the Reagan years, thirty-four names had been attached to this street. There were gaps of months and years when the street had no name at all, inspiring a famous song in the late 1980s. 

Even Mother Teresa St. had its critics. When this last idea was voted down four to one, the mayor threw up his hands and said they should just go back to the original: Rufus T. Baker St. 

And because no one had bothered to remove the ordinance against saying those particular words in that particular order, a black-faced mob came for him in the middle of the night and tied him naked atop a twenty-year-old French Trotter as both punishment and warning. 

The five streets met at a roundabout that was a hundred and thirty-four feet in diameter (each foot representing a settler who died during the 1845 Battle of Sticky Fingers River), the center of which contained a pocket park with a field of grass, a statue, and a fountain where ducks congregated in the spring and summer. There were benches where widows and widowers would sit and feed the ducks, sometimes when the ducks weren't even there. They'd play chess and read newspapers and watch the world around them change in ways both good and bad. 

The smoke, for example, that erupted from certain manufacturing plants, had turned the sky a shade darker. The noise was another thing. The loud traffic worsened month by month and year by year. And because it took you ten minutes to get from here to there instead of five, you might honk your horn, rev your engine, open your window and yell things to no one in particular. 

Soon enough you have hundreds of drivers honking their horns and yelling random things to people and things hundreds of miles away. 

All because it takes ten minutes to get where you're going instead of five. 

In the eighties, it became a tradition for graduating high school seniors to drive their cars around and around the roundabout, drinking beer and shooting at the statue. Fortunately for the statue, the graduates were terrible shots. Less fortunate were those driving on the opposite side of the roundabout, whose visits to the emergency room became the inspiration for an NBC medical drama that aired for more than a decade. 

Meanwhile, the widows and widowers keep playing chess, keep reading the newspapers, and keep feeding the ducks that may or may not be there. 

On the far side of the park were more brick buildings, one of which displayed an enormous clock that often got stuck at twelve noon (or twelve midnight, depending on your mood) and had to be fixed by a middle-aged man named Wallace McKnight, who we will meet later in the story. Because the town often forgot to pay Mr. McKnight, he would sometimes manipulate the clock so it ran slow, fast, or even backwards. 

Not too long ago he caused the escapement gear to tick louder, so when writers described the sound, they had to use italics or capital letters to make their point. The sound would echo against the buildings - tick, tick, tick - until other, louder sounds came and drowned out the clock. But there were times, like late at night in the dead of winter, when even people from the far edges of the town would wake up in the middle of the night hearing the tick tick tick of the clock tiptoeing with perfect cadence through their homes. Sometimes, confused, they’d get out of bed and go to the door, only to be greeted by a half moon resting low in the sky. 

Tick.

Tick.

Tick. 

Then, seeing all their neighbors standing in their doorways, in the cold, unsure why they are there, they retreat back into the warm safety of their homes, where the sound of the clock is still heard, but it’s much less pronounced.  
 

II.

“That a town of such little names would aspire to win the annual Regional Blue Cup of Baseball was an affront to reason.” This was written in a newspaper printed in Simon's shop after the town’s baseball team - nicknamed The Phoenix - won the 116th annual Regional Blue Cup of Baseball with Simon as assistant coach. 

After all, this town of little names was famous for its insignificance, for its anonymity, for the way no one outside its rather inconsequential borders gave it any thought. If ever anything of import came out of the town, it would be overshadowed by examples of its own “blistering idiocy,” as another publication from Simon's shop once put it. 

 

For example:

An inspiring ninety-seven percent of males showed up to enlist for the Union Army to fight in the American Civil War. The problem? It was 1872, and the Civil War had been over for seven years. It wasn't the long march to Washington that delayed them; it was that all their news came so late. 

 

Also:

The statue at the center of the roundabout - a woman on a horse holding a baby in her left arm, her right arm outstretched and holding a sword - was a gift from Mexico to show appreciation for not having participated in the annexation of the southwest. 

The problem was, it was meant for America, a town farther south. How it ended up in this town, no one remembers. And because the town America didn't care about statues any more than it cared about annexing sovereign land, it remained where it was. 

 

And:

Not too many years later the National Football Association was established, and their first point of business was to establish a competition that would take place every four years. 

When the town of little names heard about the competition, they set out to build a football team. They spent the next four years recruiting and training the best athletes from nearby schools, markets, factories, prison camps, and religious seminaries. 

Four years passed, and the team, its coaching staff, and a few dozen fans in colorful regalia made their way via train to New York City, where the inaugural National Football Association championship tournament took place. 

First: the opening ceremonies during which each team was introduced to cheering fans and dignitaries from across the country, and even across the world. 

Second: the lighting of an enormous torch high above the football field. 

And finally: several inspiring speeches about community and teamwork, about the history being made as the new sport of American football was being introduced to the world. 

That some of the players, coaches, and support staff still did not recognize the “blistering idiocy” on display should surprise no one. 

One by one and two by two they slinked away hoping to avoid notice. 

That they should have noticed the brown prolate spheroid with its leather zipper grip on the promotional materials and logos on all the billboards leading into the city might seem obvious. The numbered lines on the playing field. The goal posts. The fact that every player on every other team stood six inches taller and weighed a hundred pounds more than they did. The leather helmets and the alarming lack of teeth. 

When no one showed up for their first game against the team from Cleveland, only the five or so fans left in the stands were surprised. The team from Cleveland earned the victory by forfeiture, and for the next hundred years would not earn another. 

The players, coaches, and fans walked home, too ashamed to be seen together, too embarrassed to take the train, just wanting to stay in the shadows of anonymity for as long as possible. 

 

III.

Simon was used to such stories:

His largest order at the print shop was several thousand copies of a flier promoting a parade marking the first anniversary of the town finally recognizing a woman's right to vote. 

When the internet came in 2017 and Simon got his first-ever text from a friend in a neighboring town, he printed and framed it. Emails. Wireless printing. Video conferencing. Animal emojis. Life changed overnight. 

There was a cost. No one visited the office anymore. The shop’s owner, Mr. Lickner, busy watching cat videos, came in only a few times a month, and stayed only long enough to impart bits of elderly wisdom Simon pretended to appreciate. 

Amanda Cottonwood, the school librarian, who'd come to the office to work with Simon on brochures for her cosmetics side job for years, now emailed her orders. 

The local market emailed their coupon sheets. The market’s owner, Francis Greywater, was ninety-seven years old and often made mistakes that Simon had to correct:

“Two-and-a-half cents off Mintcoff’s Black Jelly,” one coupon might read. 

“Buy one gallon of Herbert’s Blue Mayonnaise and get a box of Fritter Biscuits half off.” 

“Ten cents off any human organ.” 

The only customer who came by regularly was the owner of the periodical The Cold War Collective, a man named James Peatmoss Marigold. 

James Peatmoss Marigold stood six feet five inches, had wide brown eyes set unevenly on his face, a nose the shape and size of a potato, and smelled like wet leaves. 

It was Mr. Marigold more than anybody who fought against bringing the internet to their town. He prophesied it would result in divorce, lost friends, a generation of kids who didn't know how to communicate and would end up jumping off bridges. No one would want to work, he argued. No one would want to learn. No one would want to leave their homes. 

Was he right? Simon wondered as he looked around his lonely office. 

Maybe a little. 

But Mr. Marigold made the same arguments when it came to women's suffrage, medicine, interracial marriage, paved roads, raising the speed limit from fifteen miles per hour to forty, seatbelt laws, and limiting sugar in the diets of preschoolers. 

But just because you're wrong about most things doesn't mean you're wrong about all things.

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To read the entire story, click here. 

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