The Real Nicknames of Guernsey County, #4

You grow up and marry the neighbor kid and then move in or take over an old trailer on your family's land. Then your kids grow up just like you and they marry and move onto the land with you. As a generation passes, you move up into the better trailer or you might even clear off a piece of land and build a little house on it....

There's a family 'round Byesville with the last name Gombeda. I always wondered about the surname. It was unusual in our county—just the one family is named that, far as I knew. So I was looking it up.... Surprisingly, I couldn't find an origin for it. Maybe Italian? Not many Italian Appalachians in Guernsey County, but the Hatfield/McCoy histories have them getting mixed up with rival Italian moonshiners. And, well, Hatfield/McCoy 'R' Us.

An even bigger surprise to me was that Gombeda is so rare a name that only Ohio and Pennsylvania have any more than ten white page listings for it. And it must not be Italian—Jersey only has two. I wonder if the Gombedas I know realize all this....

You have to think that the Gombeda family is partial to nicknaming. Some evidence that comes to mind are Mud Gombeda, Jug Gombeda, and Speed Gombeda.

These boys were given regular names at birth. Mud's name is Daniel. He owns a bar in Byesville.  Jug's name was Ronald; Speed's was Michael. The latter two died young—I don't know why but if I think to find out, I'll do an update. Now, if it weren't in poor taste, I would take bets on whether the boys' nicknames appeared in their obituaries. I know they appeared in their sister's obit—here's what I found in the local paper, from 2009:

In addition to her parents, she was preceded in death by two brothers, Michael "Speed" and Ronald "Jug" Gombeda. She is survived by seven brothers... [six men's names, with no nicknames noted] and Daniel "Mud" Gombeda of Byesville. 




Did I mention that Mud's bar is called "Mud's"?





'Round back, Mud has a wooden log "flowerbed."



I remember one spring, log flower beds suddenly sprung up in yards all around Byesville. Sometimes there were two or three, if the yard held more than one trailer. One day, driving around, Tice asked if we should get one for our yard and I said, "Uh, no, Dad."

The Real Nicknames of Guernsey County, #2

I wrote that post about Funny Clouse the Christmas Window Painter, and realize now that The Real Nicknames of Guernsey County don't all warrant their own post. So here are some nicknames that I recall, with just short explanations--all I know about them.

Not the real Tick-Tock, but that's
how Tick-Tock looked at us.

Let's start with Tick-Tock. Tick-Tock was in his 20s or 30s when I was in grade school. He had some neurological problem, I realize now, that made him swing his upper body and head side-to-side, like a metronome, in rhythm with his walk. He was like a pendulum in a clock, swinging upside down; hence, Tick-Tock.

We used to taunt Tick-Tock as he tick-tocked his way through town, all of us yelling tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock. The faster he walked, the faster he tick-tocked.

Not the real gas station, but pretty close.

 There were two sisters who lived in a defunct gas station that was situated on a hairpin curve on the road leading out of town. I don't know how it is that the gas station was never taken out by some drunk going too fast around that turn. It wasn't for a lack of drunks.

The gas station is still there to this day, all grown over, but no one lives in it anymore. The Guernsey County Sheriff cracked down some on squatting since then. Whole families used to live in abandoned stores and Post Offices--all kinds of places. You still see it there sometimes.

Not the real Minnie Pearl,
but that's how Minnie Pearl
looked at us.

Now, these two sisters sold beer, illegally, out of the gas station. If you were in the know, you stopped there and bought it. My mom was in the know. I forget what one sister's name was (dammit), but the other one was called Hard-Nip. Because you could see her nipples sticking straight out through her shirt. They had a ratty little mutt that I just loved. Its name was Minnie Pearl.


Okay, one more pair of nicknames:  my mom's and dad's. For some god-knows-why reason, my mother, whose real name was Mary Belle, got called Gunk by her 11 siblings. I tried to find out why from a couple older aunts on that side. All they could tell me was that their brother, my Uncle Donald, had given it to her. But he wouldn't tell me why; he always just grinned and laughed when I asked him. Then, Uncle Donald up and disappeared one winter. We think he might have caused a car accident and tried to escape, and had climbed down into Will's Creek in the snow and ice to get away, and maybe froze to death or had a heart attack or something. Never did find his body. My mom was real sad for a long time.

Now my dad, whose name is simply Bob, gets called Tice by nearly everyone in town, including me and my mom. The story goes that he dated a girl named Bernice in high school, and his friends started teasing him by calling him Neecy. Then for a while they called him Deecy, then Dice, and then Tice. For some reason it stopped right there and now at 80, he's still Tice to most. I considered naming Asa that, I like the name so much.

The Real Nicknames of Guernsey County, #1

Not the real Funny Clouse artwork.
I couldn't find any as alarming as his; although the
cyclops look on Prancer there kind of hints at it.

Funny Clouse was an old man with white hair and a red, bulbous nose.  He didn't talk--maybe not at all--so I don't know why everybody called him Funny. Actually, everybody called him Funny Clouse. I never heard the names said separately.

Every December, Funny Clouse would come around to the "Byesville Merchants" on 2nd Street and paint Christmas pictures on the windows of the storefronts and bars. He wasn't a very good painter, though. The reindeer were particularly difficult to recognize. The merchants tried to dissuade him from painting anything with a person face because it could turn out pretty scary. No creche scenes.

Even though Funny Clouse wasn't very good at painting, he got hired by everybody in town every Christmas. I asked my dad why once and he said it was because that was the only money Funny Clouse earned all year.

I have to say, I kind of like these. Funny Clouse's reindeer didn't look like this, though.