In Owen county, Ky., there formerly resided a self-ordained oracle on all questions pertaining to subjects of farming, horse raising and hog guessing. To him one day, as he sat on a horse block facing the public square at Owenton, came a pestered young husbandman from the knobs along the Kentucky River with this question:
“Uncle Hamp, how am I going to get shet of sassafras sprouts? The pesky dern things have jest about took an old field of mine. I’ve tried choppin’ em out and plowin’ ’em under and burnin’ ’em over, but they keep on gittin’ thicker and thicker all the time. It seems I can’t git rid of ’em noway. Whut would you advise?”
“My son,” said the wise man, “I don’t want to brag, but I reckon you ain’t made no mistake in comin’ to me—you’ve struck on to one man that’s fitten to advise you in this here matter ef anybody on this earth is. Man and boy, I’ve been givin’ the subject of sassafras sprouts my earnest attention fur goin’ on sixty years. And it’s my deliberatic judgment that when sassafras sprouts starts to takin’ a farm the only way you kin git rid of ’em is jest to pack up and move off and leave ’em.”
§ 85 Proving There’s Something in a Name
I once knew a colored child called “Exey” for short, whose real name was Eczema. The mother of the pickaninny had found the word in a patent medicine almanac and had fallen in love with its poetic sound. I also included in my acquaintance at one time a negro youth who answered to the title of Hallowed Harris.
“Yas, suh,” stated his father on being pressed for his reason for choosing so unusual a baptismal prefix for his offspring, “I got dat name outen de Holy Bible. Don’t you ’member, boss, whar it say in de Lawd’s Prayer, ‘Hallowed be Thy name’?”
But the Testamental name which struck me as being most interesting of all was worn by a dog—a mangy appearing, breedless, nondescript rabbit dog which trailed an old darky on a road in the piny woods of South Georgia. The dog ranged off into the thickets and his owner ordered him back.
“Did I hear you calling that dog ‘Rover,’ Uncle?” asked a white man.
“Naw, suh, I called him ‘Over,’ w’ich is short for ‘Mo’over,’ w’ich it is de dawg’s right name.”
“Where did you get that name and why?”