January 2011

A few weeks ago my eighteen-yearold son went to bed after me, leaving the lamps burning and the radio playing all through the night. I conclude from this that the human race is indeed doomed. Lest I be taken for something of a crank, let me explain that…

My son had spent the earlier part of the evening haranguing me about the destruction of man’s environment. He indicted the corporate society for polluting the sweet air with noxious automobile exhausts and corrupting the healing rivers in a frenzy to generate electricity. His familiar accusation frightened me far less than the melancholy discovery that the bill of particulars stopped short of incriminating his own carefree consumption. The world may indeed be trending toward an early end, and my son may know how to change it, but knowledge has not yet affected his behavior.

Forty-three-years ago Charles A. Lindberghflew out of the West into immortality, a shining figure of hope and courage in a frivolous, uninspiring time. Yet within less than fifteen years all had changed. Lindbergh and his brilliant young wife had been the victims of an atrocious crime and had been driven into exile by a sensation-seeking press. Finally, as World War II drew on and Lindbergh came home to warn his country against getting into it, he became to many a figure of obloquy and sinister rumor. In his travels around Europe, studying its aviation, flying its fighters and bombers, he had seen many Nazis, hadn ‘t he? Was he pro-German? His resignation from the Air Corps Reserve was accepted with alacrity. President Roosevelt attacked him by name. He seemed to drop out of sight, although it was known he was doing something in military aviation. Such, roughly, was the public impression.

The Jamestown settlers, the Pilgrims of New England, and other early arrivals may have named their settlements with a grand or nostalgic sense of their past history, but many later Americans were much more casual. Often towns and places were named by accident, by whimsy, or by a local postmaster or postmistress who had to find some name not yet claimed in order to establish an official postal address. In the new book, A Dictionary of American Place-Names (Oxford University Press), George R. Stewart surveys the whole process, and we publish here a Jew of his diverting examples:

Accident, Md.:

Because, in 1774, some land was marked off “by accident.”

Brandy Bar, Oreg.:

A schooner grounded on the bar one evening in 1850; the passengers broke out some brandy and passed the night in such a way as to ensure the permanency of the name.

Cuyuna Range, Minn.:

In every social group, from the local high school to the international jet set, there is likely to be one beautiful girl whose power over circumambient males goes mysteriously beyond anything that can be pictured or described. After the catalogue of her virtues and beauties has been recited to the end, there remains something ineffable; and that something is what enslaves her admirers. When such a girl moves in high circles, she is bound to attract men whose names one day will mean something in history.

The World’sColumbian Exposition, celebrating the four-hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America, opened its gates on May 1, 1893. The date did not imply doubt on the part of the city of Chicago that the famous landing had actually taken place in 1492. It was simply a case of not getting the 686 acres of fairground ready in time.

From the moment the first shovelful of earth was turned, labor disputes and fracases between the numerous exposition committees had increased and multiplied, while congressional appropriations, voted in the enthusiasm of the early planning stages, had dwindled pitifully by the time the actual day of reckoning came.