What if Camus had stopped

By JAMES BROWN
Glasgow Daily Times

September 29, 2007 01:33 pm

— In his Friday column, Joel Wilson wrote about how different communities in Barren County got their names. It reminded me of a project we performed here not long after my arrival.
Then editor Layne Bruce had everyone write on slips of paper things to love about Barren County. Out of that list came the weekly feature titled “101 Things to Love” and we wrote a bunch of stories about very interesting things in Barren County.
One of the stories I wrote was about the community of Goodnight that is near the crossroads of U.S. 31E and Ky. 70. Going into the story, I figured the community had gained its name from being a sleepy little spot in the road near the flat, barren lands from which the county got its name.
I was wrong.
As Wilson mentioned in his column, the community was named for congressman I.H. Goodnight. Apparently, he stopped there to give a speech and the locals liked it so much they named their spot in the road after him.
But what if it had been Albert Camus who had stopped by the road on a snowy evening, if it was snowing when Goodnight spoke, to repeat a few words from some existential novel. He would’ve been a stranger and perhaps would’ve spoken these words: “Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can’t be sure. The telegram from the Home says: YOUR MOTHER PASSED AWAY. FUNERAL TOMORROW. DEEP SYMPATHY. Which leaves the matter doubtful; it could have been yesterday.”
Would the residents of that spot in the road named their town for this stranger from a foreign land? We would have Camus, Ky., on the map and when some new person would move to the area they would say, “How did that place get its name?”
But what if it had been someone less alien to the residents that did not force them to ask questions about a gentleman’s assertion. Someone such as J.D. Salinger.
What if he had ridden into the T in the road and had said, “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how may parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you really want to know the truth.”
I must believe someone at the back of the crowd gathered for the speech would shout, “Didn’t you just go into it?”
What would his response be? Only J.D. would know.
It would be neat to have a town in our county called J.D., or Salinger, or something just as unexpected, like Nobob.
As a matter of fact, how the heck did Nobob get its name?
James Brown is news editor for the Daily Times. He can be reached by e-mail at jbrown@glasgowdailytimes.com.