Beech Tree News Network

Funny how we tag people with nick-names, I suppose folks of other languages do that too. Back in my hometown (Greenville, KY) we had a kooky character named Julian Fred, whose forte was handing out nick names. He called himself “Julian the Jew” that’s ‘cause he was. He’d say things like: “I’ve got to get on my Hebrew outfit and go with Momma to a Jew shindig they’re having.” His dad, Sidney Fred, ran a clothing store. Julian, doing a dad imitation would say stuff like “When Papa tries a coat on somebody, he’ll tell them: ‘chust a fit, vish yarn momma could see it’.” 

How Julian’s nicknames – and why.  Some have a reason; some don’t.

HEN-HUZZ- Local boy, became a lawyer; later a circuit judge (Dan Cornette) POONTOON BUNGLE- Racked balls at the pool room (Rueff Cornette). RUNNING JOHN- (Bill Shutt) Bill worked at the post office. He and a buddy got “oiled-up” and went to a football game. At halftime the ball was left on the fifty-yard line. Bill’s buddy pushed him and dared- “Bill, if you’ll go out yonder on the other side of the fence, I’ll run out there, steal that ball, and pass it to you.” That suited Bill.  Bill’s buddy did; Bill did. The last thing the buddy did after he flung the ball over the fence was to holler, “Run John Run!” When Bill went to his grave, he was still known as ‘Running John’.  GUY-GUY- of the FBI- Local druggist. Guy Martin was also a fine musician. Guy was the organist at the Methodist church.  BONE CRUSHER- “Crush” (Ralph Bethel) When Ralph was a kid he rode a bicycle everywhere he went- with a large automobile tire pumps strapped on the back.  “Crush” probably weighed 120 lbs. WET. “Crush” Bethel- Car Salesman.  HOO-TON (Wallace) ‘Bout the size of Hess Cartwright. His sister called him ‘little brother’. Actually from a kid-up, he was known as “TWO-TON”. Julian put his own stamp on it.

Wars produce nick named characters: CASEY- (at the throttle- Korean War) was so named after the famous railroad engineer, Casey James. “Casey” was a North Korean Mig-15 fighter pilot, probably trained by the Russians. The Russians- built Mig-15 was equal to the U.S. North American F-86 fighter, but our pilots were better… except for “Casey.” He was good. Real good.  Our pilots had to eat their razor soup for breakfast when “Casey” came to town. He was not hard to spot. He could “fly the box that thing came in”, according to even some of our best F-86 pilots. “You didn’t go to sleep when Casey was at the throttle.”  - “BUNGO PETE” was a Japanese destroyer captain down in the Salomon Islands in World War II in the South Pacific.  Our experienced submarine skippers knew his tricks. Hence they tried to pass along this vital knowledge to new submarine crews. “Pete” and his buddy destroyer skipper ran in pairs. The buddy would faint a depth charge attack. Drop a few cans on an American submarine and sail on off, leaving the U.S. sub skipper thinking it was the end of it. Lurking in the rear, “Pete” would give the American sub crew time to relax and maybe get careless, then before they knew it Pete would rush in and be right on top of them. He sank a lot of U.S. submarines this way. Kids named Donald were called “Duck”… sorry to say.

Kindest Regards… “Duck”