Three Aps, a Flop and a Snap

I wrote this piece twenty years ago but never dared publish it anywhere because of the offense that some people might take. But most of those people are dead now, so I think I’m safe. Here’s how I came to write about nicknames in my hometown of Edgerton.

I’m eating dinner at this restaurant with a friend from my boyhood. We both left town in 1960 and have gone back only for visits in the last thirty-five years. We’re sitting in this restaurant when somebody walks by, recognizes John, and stop to talk to him for a while.

“Who was that?” I ask when he leaves.
“Ed Bakker.”
“I don’t think I know him,” I say.
“Swivel-neck,” says John. “Swivel-neck Bakker.”
“Oh, yeah,” I say. “He’s the guy who could look at the clock on the back wall of church and never move any part of his body but his neck.”
“Yep. A hundred-eighty degrees from a straight ahead position.”
“Old Swivel-neck Bakker.”
That’s how it started. Now it becomes almost a competition to see who can remember the funniest nickname. John starts by giving me the name Gunnink.
“Machine-gun,” I say, remembering the deep, bass, woody woodpecker-like laugh. There was something euphonious about the phrase Machine-gun Gunnink.
“Nope, Hamburger,” he says, and I recall the huge man who was reputed to have ordered and eaten a dozen hamburgers at The Leader Café after baling all day.
Now it’s my turn. “De Boer,” I say.
“Easy,” says John, “Flop.” We both remember the man who was mayor of the town for twenty years, Flop De Boer, his gut sagging over his belt, his cheeks flopping over his jaws, his words sort of flopping out of his lips—but he led the town through some of its best years.

The game goes on, but soon John (or as he was once known, Rose, either because of his last name, Rozeboom, or his coloration after exertion,) must go. After he’s gone, I keep remembering. I remember Snap Snyder, who in a beautiful flowing hand always signing his checks with just one word, “Snap.” I remember how in his youth my father, Ap Schelhaas (Albert), was part of a gang made up of himself and Snap and Hap Kooiman and Flap something or other.

My cousin Chick Hannenburg (his real name was Leon but his dad’s name was Chuck so Chick was the logical nickname he acquired—Chuck’s chick) had a cousin whose mom’s nickname was Fat. Whenever they visited there he’d say, “We’re going to Fataneddie’s tonight or we’re going to Aunt Fat’s tonight.” Her husband Eddie died years ago, but the last time I saw Fat—really Florence—she was a relatively spiffy seventy-five-year-old who probably didn’t weigh over 140 pounds. She was still called Fat.

Squeaky Menning might have made it as a contra-tenor, but as a school bus driver he took lots of abuse for his high-pitched voice. Town constables were also abused. The first in my memory was named John something. I remember him only as Johnny Ketchem. He was replaced by Speed Kruen. My Grandpa Pete, whose native language was Dutch, referred to him as that “Swift Kruen fellow.” He never realized he had it wrong. The last cop I remember was Marion “Mutt” Pool who cannot be faulted for preferring his nickname to his baptized name.

My friend Leon Fey was called Butch by his parents and Toddner by some of the kids in the neighborhood. Toddner stuck, but it stuck as Todd, and eventually Leon took Todd as his legal name. Ervy (Ervin) Fey, Todd’s uncle, gave me my nickname. (Ervy’s son, Dennis, was never called anything but Pete by anyone. His dad started that, too.) As I walked by the Ford Garage on my way to the Farmers Store, Ervy always said, “Hey Dagwood” because of the cowlicks on both the north and south ends of my head. Eventually Dagwood changed to Bumpstead which hardened for a time into Bump which was accidentally appropriate since on almost all of my class pictures between grades three and seven I had a scab or a bump on my face. Thankfully, “Bump” died a quiet death. The one nickname I really craved was “Skelly” but my cousin Glenn, two years older than me, had already earned that proud sobriquet.

I suppose that at this point I should be ready to make some profound observation or generalization about nicknames, but I can’t. Sometimes they are funny and sometimes sad, and usually accurate. I believe they are more frequently used by men and boys than by women and girls, but I don’t know why. I suspect they are more often used in small rural communities than in cities. Or perhaps they just hang on longer in small towns. Young people who grow up in small towns will probably leave their nicknames behind them when they move on—and most will not try to hold on to them. I cannot imagine a young man or woman on the rise today putting a nickname on his or her business card, but businesses on Main Street, Edgerton, were owned and successfully operated by three “Ap’s,” a “Flop,” a “Snap” and a “Yerdy.”

I realize that nicknames are cruel, but they can also build self-esteem. I suppose we are better off as their use and longevity diminish. Still, I believe that if the use of nicknames would disappear, we would lose something of value. But it couldn’t happen. No way! As long as there are boys with wit, creativity, nerve, and just the slightest measure of meanness in their hearts, there will be nicknames.

Most of the boys of my youth have moved on to other towns and I’ll never see them again, but I would like for just an hour or so to be back on the baseball diamond with Squirrel and Sluggo and Abba and Pee-wee, with Verk and Ike and Little Hupe, with Wec and Lefty and Rose and even, poor fellow, Bob.