RUBBERY SHRUBBERY Post 5
Here we go again—another whirl with the Rubbery Shrubbery (RS) blog as it follows Yachats (YAH-hots), Oregon, and its inhabitants—generally called Yachatians (yah-HAY-shuns), or in many cases, Yahotties (yah-HOT-tees)—as they acquire a Major League Baseball franchise. They’re making great progress, as you will see. To learn about Yachats, “Baseball Capital of the World,” please go to this page or go to GoYachats.
Many Yachatians are yearning to contribute posts to the RS blog. Today’s lucky author again will be Harrison Grutch, who will continue from the previous post, describing the NAME-OUR-TEAM Contest. In case you’ve forgotten, the winner will be given at least a handful of season tickets to our team’s first season.
A Nickname in the Making!
by Harrison Grutch
Some fish stories are happier than others. Eudora Bixby, smiling and garbed in her finest beige housecoat and pink slippers, bustled across town to the Yachats Post Office where she found Phyllicida, Bebe, and Forbes slumped on their customary bench. The whole world was bright and cheerful but for this miserable trio. They had failed to find an acceptable nickname for the Yachats team.
Eudora stood before their wretchedness and couldn’t help but smirk. Without uttering a word, she held out her pulsating fist and unfolded to reveal her surprise…a mishmash of scales, fins, tail, and beady eyes.
“SMELT!” exclaimed Forbes. Phyllicida and Bebe were speechless beyond words. How often had each of them enjoyed a daily smelt sandwich with no inkling it held the answer to their quest? For that matter, each had trodden the 804 Trail north of Yachats to the Smelt Sands State Park without suspicion that right there on that beachy smelt habitat resided the appellation our team would carry to its destiny. (Figure 1 shows two smelt fisherpeople at the Smelt Sands State Park.)
Figure 1. Smelt fisherpeople at Smelt Sands State Park. (Photo by Elizabeth Gates.)
Eudora glowed with hard-earned pride. At last, she was emerging from the shadow of her eminent husband, Horace. At last, she would be a celebrity in her own right. Her brown eyes sparkled, and her gray-streaked auburn hair began to curl itself gently on the nape of her neck.
Wasting no time, Bebe, Phyllicida, and Forbes leaped to their feet and led Eudora, still clutching her epiphany, skipping the yellow brick road a few blocks north to the home of Abigail Bosonella, the interim NAME-OUR-TEAM judge who had replaced the missing Judge Crater. The oddly attractive Abigail had been swamped with undesirable nickname suggestions since the contest began. Upon hearing urgent rapping on her knocker, she waded across the living room and flung open the door to her surprise.
There, in the brilliant sunshine, stood the beaming beige and pink Eudora and her three beaming friends. Without a word Eudora thrust out her fist revealing the rearranged seafood. Upon seeing Eudora’s hodgepodge, Abigail’s first impulse was “ICK!” But then she realized she was viewing Yachats’s future, and her complexion turned a different color. And the more she thought about it, the more her toes uncurled and the more the world looked like chocolate. Abigail slowly took on an air of abandon.
“Oh, what the heck. Smelt it is,” she announced at last to the cheers of the trio plus one. There comes a time in the life of each red-blooded American village when destiny soars. Realizing this was Yachats’s time, Bebe suggested they all hold hands and sing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” A look from Phyllicida suggested they not. “Kumbaya, maybe?” received an even sterner look.
Still, Phyllicida was partially giddy, and although music-restrained, she managed to bubble with non-melodious excitement. As did Forbes, though bubbling manfully. Thus unable to contain themselves, the quartet plus one took to the streets of Yachats to announce to all, in town crier fashion, that the Yachats baseball team had a nickname at long last. And a nickname both fans and players could be proud of. GO SMELT!
Next time: We’ll find out how Yachatians reacted to the news that their village had become the baseball capital of the world. Did everyone take to being Smelt immediately?
NOTE: Please go to “Leave a Reply” at the bottom of this page if you have special feelings for RS. We’ll save your feelings and publish them all on the day the Yachats Smelt play their first game in the majors.
NOTE AGAIN: Eric Sallee and Dave Baldwin have been repeatedly accused of having something to do with this blog. They have denied it again and again.
As long as it’s not Yachats Yankees with a nickname of Yinstripes.
Loved this:
For a moment Forbes was bewitched by Bebe’s fetching chime-like titter. But then, realizing the topic was still baseball and he was supposed to have knowledge of that sport in conjunction with the potential for rampant baldness, Forbes tried to mirror the ladies’ enthusiasm by sputtering, “Wow, that is cool.”
From that point everything was spaghetti pudding. Forbes could do little but smile sagely and add, “yep,” or “sounds great,” as Phyllicida surmised which celebrity they could get to throw out the first pitch, and Bebe shared baseball trivia she had picked up from Martha Stewart.
Had to read Eudora’s “Why I Live At The P.O.” for Freshman English