I’ve been saving this one for today because it’s a rather unique way to wish my wife Amy and my mother a Happy Mother’s Day. You never know what you’re going to find, as you rumble along the nation’s back roads. A couple of years ago – during a stop for a meal at the Pie Town Café in Pie Town, New Mexico – this is what I came across:
Since today happens to be my birthday, I’m going to write a post about Brad Herzog. But it’s not entirely about me, so it’s not completely narcissistic. You see, among the many “story idea” files that I keep in my office at home (as opposed to my summer office on wheels) is a file with this title: “Other Brad Herzogs.”
I’ve been known to Google myself on occasion, just searching for book reviews and newspaper articles and such. I know there’s an element of vanity involved, but well… the life of an author can be a bit of an ego rollercoaster, so sometimes I need all the self-esteem I can get. In the process of such searches I’ve occasionally come across other Brad Herzogs. So I started keeping a file, although I was never quite sure what I would do with the information – until now.
(Disclaimer: This won’t really work if your name is Joe Smith – too many possibilities. Or if your name is Fannie Katzenellenbogen – too few.)
Anyway, here’s what I’ve found: There’s a Brad Herzog who teaches literature at Southern Arkansas University (I’d like to meet him). There’s a former high school swimmer from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma… and a 275-pound wrestler from Beachwood, Ohio… and a business economics graduate of the University of California in Santa Barbara… and a police officer in Marseilles, Illinois… and a bank manager in Orinda, California… and a photographer in Massachusetts… and a skier in Montana… and, apparently, a big fan of dachshunds in Colorado. Historically speaking, there’s even a Brad Herzog who fought in the Battle of the Bulge.
And a few months ago, I received a Facebook friend request from a fellow from Kansas City named… Bradley Herzog. So that was weird.
What does this have to do with my traveler’s journal? Well, what intrigues me about these other people is that we’ve gone through life with a shared name but obviously dramatically different experiences. Frankly, it fascinates me.
The same is true for American places. Pick almost any town name, and you can probably find at least a few other hamlets around the atlas that share it. Occasionally, you can find dozens. Let’s pick one as an experiment. To keep the narcissistic theme going, how about Bradley.
There happens to be a hamlet named Bradley here in Monterey County, California. It's the site of a military base. But there’s also one in West Virginia, and it is home to Appalachian Bible College. And the one in Maine is near the Sunkhaze Meadows National Wildlife Refuge. There’s a Bradley in southern Arkansas, about five miles from the Louisiana border – and fewer than 600 people live there. But there’s also one in eastern Illinois, on the outskirts of Kankakee. More than 12,000 people call it home.
Imagine the varied experiences people have had, all of them living in a place called Bradley. Someday, I’d like to explore them all, just to get some more insight into the diversity of places that are similar in name only. And in a house on wheels that just may be a possibility.
But I wonder if they also prefer to be called Brad.
Today marks the 200th anniversary of the day Abraham Lincoln was born. Best I can tell, there are at least two-dozen towns named Lincoln in the United States. Oddly, I think I’ve only been to maybe three of them.
My cousin and his family used to live in a restored schoolhouse in picturesque Lincoln, Vermont. But my one visit there happened to coincide with the only time I ever contracted poison ivy, so it wasn’t as enjoyable as it could have been. And last August, we stopped in Nebraska’s version to get the oil changed in the RV’s generator. But that’s about all we did there, so it wasn’t particularly exciting.
All things considered, I’d have to say my most interesting visit to a land called Lincoln came just under four years ago when I motored through Lincoln, Montana. Because that’s where the Unabomber lived.
Situated high up along Highway 200 and named for the fact that there was a gold strike there at approximately the same time President Lincoln was assassinated, Lincoln is just a typical Montana mountain town – some motels, antique stores, several hole-in-the-wall casinos with names like Bootlegger and Wild Jacks – and, of course, an RV campground.
Indeed, there may be no better way to illustrate how ubiquitous RV parks are than to point to one in Lincoln. After all, the town is so inconspicuous that Ted Kaczynski thought it would be a good place to remove himself from society. Most folks knew him simply as “The Hermit,” the guy who lived in a shack and rode his bicycle into town for groceries on occasion, a straw hat covering his scraggly hair. But the FBI finally caught up with him.
I arrived in Lincoln a few years later and enjoyed a sandwich at PondeRose’s Restaurant, a tiny café alongside the Moose Joose Saloon. The restaurant’s motto: “We treat you like family.” (So I expected the waitress to tell me to get my elbows off the table and call my sister more often).
“Do you get tired of travelers popping in here and asking only about the Unabomber?” I asked the waitress.
“All the time,” she said.
So I didn’t bother asking directions to the man’s mailbox, which apparently can still be seen outside of town. Instead, I drove about 25 miles up the road, almost to Rogers Pass and the Continental Divide. There, a sign at a highway turnoff announced that “the coldest official temperature ever recorded in the continental United States occurred at a mining camp near here on Jan. 20, 1954, when the temperature dropped to 70 degrees below zero.”
So I’d say Montana’s Lincoln is famous for a couple of things, but I’m guessing the town might like to be famous for neither.
