Hola, Sneakers! Welcome back to Sneaky Dragon, the bone-chillingest podcast on the internet!
Ian and David were pleased to welcome friend of the show and third dragon Nina Matsumoto into the dragon’s lair this week!
On the show: a mystery guest revealed; bone chilling fact; don’t celebrate good times; wedding bell blues; super Scorpio; morning trained; not driven to drive; the “fuck this” bus; cold, cold ground; he will survive; peaked interest; symbiote apologist; water cooler TV; cougar trapped; somebody’s mother; geographically fast and loose; temporal rainforest; shrunken burgers; honey traps; postal service murder; we forgot “ogopogo”; water world; hydro damned; hooray for dykes; uncommunicative; trivial trivia; it’s Japanese movie title guessing game time; slow boat; training wheels; Question of the Week – Sneakers respond; vintage ice cream; so-so comedy; elusive Alanis; button versus zipper; not listening; people displeasers; smurf pants; lambchops; the seven masked bird; a special kindness; the Minnie Pearl connection; the old switcheroo; and, finally, existential dread.
Nina’s Question of the Week: Buttons or zippers? (Or Velcro?)
Nina’s Sub-question of the Week: Do you have a good story about a place name where you live?
Thanks for listening.
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I enjoyed Nina guest hosting this past week. Great job and the Japanese movie title trivia was a lot of fun!
Zippers bust or slide down at the worst moments just as much as buttons come undone or clothing pulls at shirt buttons when you sit down. I don’t have any particular preference for either. Velcro has as many issues—lint builds up and the Velcro won’t stick, and Velcro is pretty noisy. Let’s be honest, they are all necessary and equally evil.
About a 14-minute drive up the road from Grinder’s Switch is a community called Only. There used to be a General Store there. Whenever you asked the owner how much something cost, he would always reply that it was “only” a certain amount. Nice hand towels were only 25 cents, men’s blue giant work shirts were only 89 cents, men’s unionalls were only 3 dollars and 29 cents, a pound of good roast coffee was only 17 cents, twelve delicious Winesap apples were available for the very low price of only 2 cents for the dozen, etc. Only stuck as the name.
There used to be quite a few moonshiners in Hickman County, so many in fact that the county is still known as “Keg County.” Seven minutes east of Only is a community called Bucksnort. Over in Bucksnort, there used to be a moonshiner who would sell you a snort of whiskey for a dollar. It was a buck a snort, hence the name Bucksnort.
Thirty-three miles southeast of Bucksnort is the lovely City of Hohenwald (most people pronounce it is Hoe-in-wall although the old timers used to pronounce it as Horn-wall). Hohenwald is nestled in the beautiful timberlands of Lewis County. Hohenwald was founded by Warren Smith, and his German wife Augusta gave it its name. The story goes that the community wanted a post office, but government said the community had to have a name before they would approve A. P. Grover’s request to operate a post office out of his general store. When Augusta was at the store, Mr. Grover asked her what she thought would be a good name. Augusta said in her heavy accent that Hohenwald was a good enough name. Hohenwald is German for “High Forest.” My favorite part of this story is what happened next.
A reception was given to honor the newly named community and to celebrate the first mail delivered to the post office. Warren gave a speech. Augusta presented the pony express rider with a homemade cake. Next an elder offered a prayer of thanksgiving and a petition for God’s continued care and blessing. He then said that as it was customary to “christen our babies by baptism and dedicate them to God,” he saw no reason why the town shouldn’t be. So he broke a bottle of water against a tree and said, “I baptize thee Hohenwald.” As far as I know Hohenwald is the only town in Middle Tennessee to have been baptized at its naming.
Have a wonderful week everyone! I plan on using my time off for the American Thanksgiving holiday to start decorating for Christmas. I’ll be catching up on my favorite vampire, Mr. Barnabas Collins and the spooky ongoings of Collinwood as I put up my tree and trimmings.