Arab was not a large city. I don’t believe it is now either.  But at the time of my childhood, we boasted a population of approximately 8,000 people. As it turns out, 2005 estimates place it around 7,500.  So it seems we might have been a bit ambitious some two decades ago.

But I gotta say that I love it when people ask me where I’m from.  ”Arab,” I say.  Of course I pronounce it appropriately. Not like /ˈarəb/ as in “Arab Muslim.” Most of us were Baptist or Methodist.  But /āˈrab/ as in “a rab-id coon bit my dog and now I have to shoot ‘im.”  There’s always an odd silence that follows.  Once I savor that moment, I continue.  ”It’s a little town just south of Huntsville.”  At this, I almost always get one of two responses.

Some just shake their heads.  But most – and I do mean most – will say, “Oh, sure. I know Arab.”  How so many people have come to be connected to Arab is beyond me.  Sometimes they have relatives there.  Sometimes they recall having sold such-and-such to so-and-so (who is usually related to someone in the first group).  Regardless, it’s one of those freaky rules of nature, like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.  Almost anyone can be traced back to Arab in six steps or less.

Don’t get me wrong.  Arab is not without its famous events and people.  For starters, there’s the annual Poke Salat Festival.  But perhaps even more noteworthy is the fact that  the short list of hometown successes (according to Wikipedia) includes actress Monica Potter (Along Came a Spider et al). I should note that I find no other evidence of this anywhere online. But regardless, she  joins my friend Jill King (Country singer and songwriter) as the only two mentions.

I am predictably NOT on the list.  Apparently they don’t consider winning the University of North Alabama “Ugly Walk” Competition worthy of recognition.  Well, I’m not bitter.  But I would also like to point out that I was the star of the brief-but-popular morning radio segment “Breakfast with Brandon” on AM 1380 – WRAB (Your Friend and Neighbor).  That listening audience spanned from Joppa to Scant City. So it was a pretty big deal.

Regarding the name, (and this could just be the product of myth – but one which also eventually found its way to Wikipedia) I’ve always understood it to have come from little more than a clerical error.  The city’s founder was also it’s first postmaster, Stephen Tuttle Thompson. His son’s name was Arad.  Yes, that’s A-R-A-D.  When the city decided to incorporate in 1882, three options were given for the name: Ink, Bird, and Arad.  Apparantly, we went with Arad, but a tragic typo in the process of incorporation deemed us forever . . . Arab.

I’m glad they went with Arad.  If one of the other names had been chosen and misspelled, I might have ended up being from Jnk. I can only guess how we would have pronounced that one.  Or we might have been known as Bord, which was what most of us were anyway growing up in that town.

Make no mistake.  Arab is, and forever will be, at the very top of my list of favorite places to grow up – and that’s not just  because it’s the only place I grew up. I love that city.  Ask any one of those 8,000 7.500 people, and they’ll have their own stories, their own history, their own notable people, places, and things.

Got a good Arab story? Click “Read More” and post it below.  My friend Jackie works for Otelco, so I know they have internet now.

A really short story, actually more of a soliloquy, this is just a brief look at the silly justifications each of us make about our fears and shortcomings.  How often do we pick that one thing about ourselves that we hate and pin all our failures on it?  We say, “If I could just change this one thing, everything else would be different.”

Well, meet Purvis, the guy who’s name says it all.

What’s In A Name

This place is pretty well packed tonight.  The lights are low, and the music is loud, which is good.  Loud music means less talking. Talking is bad, because it requires introductions.  And introductions mean I have to say it.  “Hi, my name is Purvis.”

Yep, Purvis.  I know what you’re thinking. “What kind of name is that?”  I know, right?  The first thing people use to size you up, the way they remember you, the key to the very door into your soul, and my parents choose Purvis. Really?

I guess I could understand it if I were named for some legendary ancestor like a General Purvis Augustus, leader of Allied Forces on some beach in Normandy.  Or maybe a Reverend Purvis Leonidas, fearless missionary taking God to naked natives up and down the Amazon.  But alas, there are no such heroes in my family tree.

I used to wonder if maybe I was named for that FBI guy who nabbed Dillinger.  Turns out Purvis was actually the name of the gardener who worked for my grandmother.  He sculpted topiaries of Bible characters.  Apparently, his juniper Jesus was so lifelike that people would come from miles around to pray to it.  And here I am, a testament to his horticultural moxy.

Hey, there’s that group of girls from HR down the hall.  They already know my name, I think.  I could just skip the whole introduction part.  Oh wait.  There’s those guys from Sales.  OK, never mind.  I’ll let them have a chance. They probably all have really cool names anyway.  Some of them probably even have great nicknames too.  I always envied guys with great nicknames.  My friend Nathan Canasta played football.  His number was 50.  So “Five Oh” became his name for the rest of high school.  Richard Barefoot was Native American, the only Native American we knew.  So we called him “Chief.”

So why couldn’t I get one of those names? I was cool. Right?  I knew things.  I did stuff.  But nothing ever stuck.  I used to write names on my notebooks to try them out.  I wrote “Big Show” and then “Full House,” but I’m just over five feet tall and 120 pounds with my Sunday shoes on.  I also considered “Lefty” and “John Deere,” but I’m right handed, and I’ve never actually seen a tractor in real life.  In the end, I’m just a tragically vanilla, homogeneous human being with absolutely no distinguishing characteristics save one . . . the name “Purvis.”

Look who just sat down at the other end of the bar.  That’s the girl I saw last week, the one with the curly hair.  I can’t tell in here, but I think she might be hot.  Then again, it’s really dark.  I might chance it and walk over.  But what would I say?

“Excuse me, would you like some nuts?”  No, that won’t work.

“From over there you looked pretty, so I just wanted to come over and make sure you weren’t really ugly close up.”  No, better let that one go too.

If I only had a name like Fred or Ralph or something.  Then I could just say “Hi, I’m Fred or Ralph or something.”

I guess I could use my middle name, Arthur.  Or maybe just Art.  But then again, art is what you hang on a wall or make in preschool with macaroni and Elmer’s Glue. And I certainly can’t shorten my first name.  “Purv.”  Nope, I don’t think so. One time I considered combining a short version of my first and middle names.  But then I thought it through. “Purv Art.” Are you kidding me? Mom, Dad, how much do you hate me?

“What’ll it be tonight, kid?” That’s the bartender. I think his name is Stan, or maybe Dan.

“O’Dules.”

“Right.”

Dan’s a nice guy.  He works a lot.  Always here when I come in.

“Hey Dan, you got a nickname?”

“Yeah. It’s Stan.”

“Oh, right. Sorry.”

Hey, when did Jackson come in?  “Hey! Jackson, my man! What’s up?  Huh?  Oh, yeah. Sure. Well, I’ll just be over here.  Keep it real, man.”

Jackson runs the sandwich cart on the corner by the office.  Now Jackson, that’s a real name.  Like “action,” only Jackson. That guy’s gonna go places with a name like that.

But not me.  I’m just gonna sit here at this bar and watch all these well-named individuals go about their happy lives while I waste away in the intoxicating wash of Near Beer.  Just me, the Purv-meister.  The Purvinator.  Potent.  Powerful.  Purvilicious.

I’ve got to get a new name.

A big thing in our house right now is the History Channel series America: The Story of Us. Our recent home-schooling experiences have taught us the value of history told in unique and creative ways. We keep recording these programs and getting sucked in by the “I-never-knew-that” factor upon which these types of series seem to be built.

Yet despite the flashy reenactments and deep-voiced cinematic narration, there’s still no substitute for first-hand experience.  My children learned this on a recent family trip to Logan Jr. High School, the historic institution where my wife attended kindergarten, first, and second grades.  I should immediately point out that my wife is in no way historic.  The school, however, is.  In fact, it’s not even a working school now, but rather a community center safely in the hands of local preservationists.

Logan Jr. High School is an unassuming, ancient structure with tan rock walls and hardwood floors that bare witness to years of young feet finding their way through life. Thanks to the afore-mentioned preservationists, almost every detail of this facility is still in tact, right down to the trophies displayed proudly in glass cases along the main hallway.  Fading class photos chronicle a legacy of neatly posed children sitting in ordered rows of desks. Of the few classrooms, most are large and designed to accommodate more than one class at a time. According to my wife, her second grade classroom and its teacher were shared by an entire other grade – at the same time.

The large rooms still have all the trappings, including the manual pencil sharpeners and chalkboards of solid and dashed parallel lines.  But perhaps the most intriguing fixtures are the small hallways hidden behind each of the classrooms.  These narrow spaces, called cloak rooms, are lined with wall hooks and low shelves.  Designed for quick one-way traffic, cloak rooms facilitated the in and out rush of children as they hurried to beat the bell or were saved by it.  It’s not so odd, even now, to find an area of a classroom devoted to coats and books.  But this space was different.  It’s placement, it’s design, it’s feel were all oddly reminiscent of Little House on the Prairie.

I’ll spare you the true historical facts surrounding the school.  Suffice to say that it housed more than one generation of the local community.  Even older family members touring with us remarked several times how much smaller things were than they had remembered as a child.

As we strolled through the dark halls (apparently the preservationists are also energy conservationists), my wife began to laugh.  She told our girls about a particular morning when she decided NOT to go gentle into that good school.  After being dropped off, she cried and kicked and screamed and employed all sorts of unorthodox diplomacy.  Her teacher, unyielding, tightened her grip and hauled her into the school.  My wife’s subsequent protests turned to kicking which resulted in the unfortunate flight of one of her shoes.  The flight ended when the shoe struck the principle in the forehead.

As she laughed, she told us that neither she, nor her teacher, nor the principle were laughing at the time.

She could have shared that story sitting in our living room.  But now my kids have touched and smelled and felt what it was like for their mother to be a kid in school.  They’ve walked those halls, seen those pictures, and heard those stories, even as they stood in the very spot where that history was made.

And so, on a Sunday afternoon, in a little town from which we get the name of our third child, our family gained a true understanding of, and perhaps even an appreciation for, one episode of The Abbotts: The Story of Us.

“Dad?” RileyGrace is sitting in the back of our Ford Windstar gazing out the window. 

 ”Yes, ma’am.” 

“How many years is a person when they start to get old?”  I glance at her in the rear view mirror.  Her posture is perfect as she sits atop the last car seat she’ll ever need.  Her head is tilted inquisitively.  Loose strands of angel hair dance in front of her face, glowing in the afternoon sun.  My last little girl is growing up so fast.  She smiles, awaiting an answer to her question.

“Well, it depends,” I offer. “Some people get old very early.  Others really never seem to get old.  I guess it just depends on the person.”

She considered this for a moment.  I am proud of my response.  Not too much information, but enough to answer the question accurately.  It is a secret aspiration of mine that my kids will one day look back and reflect on the great wisdom of their father.  I bask in visions of the three of them as adults sharing Thanksgiving coffee around the family table, marveling at how good ole’ Dad could take even the most complex of subjects and put them in terms that even a child could understand.

“Dad?” RileyGrace interrupts my delusions of grandeur.

“Yes, honey.”

“How many years were you when you got old?”

Clearly I have done my job.

Dr. Bellows wore plaid shirts without fail.  I remember this because the shape of his round belly played tragic games with the stripes in the pattern.  The result was something like latitude and longitude markings on a lumpy globe that orbited the room at least twice during each class.  I had decided from the first day that I would not learn much from Dr. Bellows.  After all, I was a national finalist in one of the most competitive speech contests in the country.  This was a “gimme” class.  I needed an easy “A” to make up for the dismal prospects offered by “Dr. Pass-Me-If-You-Can” in Music History.

By the end of the semester, I had managed to pass Music History (through much prayer and fasting).  It was instead Speech 101 that presented the biggest challenge.  In the end, it was Dr. Bellows, a walking globe with headlight-sized horn-rims and a hair cut reminiscant of Nicholas from “Eight is Enough” who almost failed me, and in doing so taught me perhaps one of the most important lessons of my young adult life. 

The speech was on the business of song writing.  Being a music business major, material on the subject was plentiful.  The delivery was artful, if I do say so myself.  It had humor.  It had drama.  It earned me a standing ovation.  Excuse me while I move to the head of the class.  That’s right.  State Public Speaking Champion coming through.  Yes, it’s a gift.  No, I’m not sure autographs are appropriate right now.  Perhaps after class.

Now, I’m being silly.  I actually only gave one autograph after class, and that one just basically committed me to bring something salty to the next Band Social.  Shortly thereafter, I made my way to Dr. Bellows, who was seated on his axis at the rear of the room.  I had yet to receive his certain praise, and I swelled at the prospect.  What wonderful words might he use to describe my eloquence, my mastery of the oratory?  Perhaps he would even ask me to teach the class next week while he took some time off for that long overdue visit to the barbershop.

“Mr. Abbott.”  He beckoned me forward.  “Have a seat Mr. Abbott.”  Wow, this was gonna take some time.  I must have been better than I thought.

“Brilliant speech, Mr. Abbott.”

“Thank you, sir.”  I said, waiting, hoping for more. 

“You’re clearly the best speaker in the class.”

“Thank you, sir.”  Man, I love that part.

“I almost hate to fail you on this speech.” 

My mind hit the rewind button.  For a moment, I thought he said “fail.”  No, he must have said, “hail,” as in “hail you as the magnificent speaker you are.”

“I’m sorry?” 

“Mr. Abbott.  You can’t BS a BS’er.  Your delivery was wonderful.  But no one cared, because you said nothing.  I actually know less now that I did before I heard you speak.  Your reliance on rhetoric is alarming.”

The gaping whole that was my mouth invited all manner of flying things to enter at will. 

“Next time, Mr. Abbott, I want you to remember one thing.  How you speak will mean nothing unless you actually have something to say.”

I turned 34 the other day. And like my age, real life has descended upon me like Sitting Bull on Custard.  Yet as I reflect upon the sweet chaos that is my world, I have started seeing things I’ve never seen before.  I hear sounds I’ve never heard before.  I feel weights I’ve never felt before.  And from all of this I am learning (thanks to Dr. Bellows) how to say things I’ve never said before.  I have finally stopped obsessing over how I speak.  I have finally started focusing on what I say.

And to my surprise, I really do have something to say.