> On Feb 29, 7:55 pm, "Olin"
comcast.net> wrote:>> "jakdedert"
bellsouth.net> wrote in message
>>
>> news:4s0yj.3438$rE5.2223@bignews5.bellsouth.net...
>>
>>
>>>>> maxo wrote:
>>>>> On 2008-02-29 15:48:04 -0600, maxo
gmail.com> said:>>
>>>>>> Sidney--such a pusillanimous middle name, could that be the reason
>>>>>> McCain doesn't use it? Fear of being beaten up in the Senate
>>>>>> chamber?
>>>>>> Can you imagine Bernie Sanders straddling a horizontal Senator
>>>>>> McCain,
>>>>>> giving him a wet willy while shouting, "MY TIME HAS COME!!"?
>>>>> Isn't that pronounced "Thidney?"
>>
>>>> Stamp your foot for effect!
>>
>>>> McCain's oratory *has* been Thidniesthque on the stump. What's up with
>>>> that? Such insipid tonality.
>>
>>> Trying not to piss anybody (else) off?
>>
>>> jak
>>
>> Better him than me. Had my father lived beyond my birth, I would have
>> been
>> "Sidney Leon" after his brother who flew bombers for the Canadian Air
>> Force
>> in WWII. Flew one too many, in fact, and is buried over there.
>>
>> Alas, he died too, and my mother honored him by naming me after him,
>> albeit
>> with a different middle name so I wouldn't get tagged with "Junior."
>>
>> I do wish my father had lived, but I've never been sure I'd have enjoyed
>> life as either a Sidney OR a Leon, much less both of 'em.
>
> To be honest, "Sidney Leon" is pretty badass--but it's a name for guys
> that requires tending, like "Leslie". You gotta work it in a Johnny
> Cash Sorta way. I'm a child of the 70s and "Sidney" always makes me
> think of the compassionate headshrink on MASH. That character's
> attitude left as much a mark on me as reading those commie Kurt
> Vonnegut books.
>
Oh, it would not have been a bad name, all things considered, but as you
say, it requires some tending... not that "Olin" doesn't, you understand.
;^)
Especially with my middle name, which is Landon, showing me old mum was an
alliterative sort, her maiden name being Landmon, she simply took the "m"
out and voila!
Took a lot of kidding over that name when I was a child, but I never cared
much. The name's served me fairly well and I can only hope I've served it in
like kind.
> I wish your father had lived too.
>
Yep. The stories that old man could have told me first hand. He crossed the
equator twice, got lost in Chicago, hailed a cab and asked 'em to take him
back to his hotel whereupon the driver drove around the block and deposited
him at the FRONT door, survived the explosion of a mine sweeper in the
Aleutians as well as the torpedo attack that crippled the Saratoga in WWII,
and died in a house fire in Texas.
He was a chief gunner's mate in the Navy, and did a tour of duty teaching
gunnery in the DC area. Mom went with him on that posting and got a job as a
courier in the building that housed the Washington Bureau of the Associated
Press. She announced to the Washington AP contingent that FDR had just
passed on, and didn't get to even SEE the wire machine again for several
days. Pop wound up being the Navy rep in FDR's honor guard on the parade
from the train station to the White House. It wasn't the parade that most
people recall seeing, but there is film of it and it's been shown, most
recently a few years back in a PBS retrospective of FDR and there's even a
still photograph of the back of my old man's back, strolling beside the
caisson carrying FDR to the White House in one of the books that accompanied
that film.
Not bad for a couple farm kids from North Central Texas. May both their
souls rest in peace.
