The Tale of Piggy and his friends

The Tale of Piggy and his friends, Eel, Snake, and Birdy

Old C&D Canal when Aunt Skinny came through in 1921. Note: Steamer Penn and tow path for mules at right

Birdy Battersby with the crane he jumped from in 1949 (2003 photo)

Once you get a nickname it’s almost impossible to get rid of it. These alternate names are applied for various reasons, usually when the recipient is very young. Sometimes they’re given to highlight certain physical characteristics, slim or shorty for example. Sometimes given names or surnames are corrupted for humorous effect, or because the original names are long or hard to pronounce. But, as I recall, most of the nicknames that were tacked on and stuck to people in Chesapeake City were done so because of something the recipient did or said that was especially unusual. Over the years, our town has had an abundance of colorful characters, and many of them have had even more colorful nicknames.

Known to her nieces and nephews as “Aunt Skinny,” Miriam Ohrel, who sailed to Chesapeake City from Philadelphia on a barge in 1921, received her nickname because of her thinness as a young woman. Beloved by her extended family, she grew to be an average-sized 91-year-old who lived a productive life on the North Side.

Ellison Ireland became stuck with “Eel” because of a shortened corruption of his first name. He was “Eel” for the rest of his life. For a while, in school, I was called “Huzzle” because it was a quirky substitute for “Hazel.” Thank goodness it didn’t stick.

“Snake” was given to Robert Johnson because, while attending Town Point’s one-room schoolhouse, he put a dead snake under the hood of his teacher’s car so that he could pull it out later (with all the kids and teacher looking on) and say, “Look, here’s why you have trouble starting your car.” For the rest of his life Robert was “Snake” to everybody in town.

Lifetime resident Raymond Battersby—“Birdy” to everyone except his older family members—told me that he got that name as a kid on Canal Street because of all the bird-brained things he did. He’d swim across the canal to the Corps of Engineers’ area, for example, climb to the top of a high crane and jump off into fairly shallow water.

My son’s friend, Gene, was dubbed “Hook” when he was a boy of eleven or twelve. One day, when my boy and Gene were trying out for the town’s Little League team, I was helping coach Marty Poore work with the boys on sliding drills. We demonstrated the hook slide and had the boys line up beyond third base. One by one we had them run and slide into home as we commented on their techniques. Well, Gene really excelled in sliding. At breakneck speed, he made perfect hook slides to the plate, causing clouds of dust to linger in the air. I can still see him dashing towards home and executing a perfect slide. All the kids slid in several times and he was always the best by far. And, as you suspect, we all started calling him “Hook.” It caught on big.

Well-known Major League baseball player, John Mabry, grew up in Chesapeake City. He played baseball for the town’s Little League teams and for Bohemia Manor High School. To most of us in town “John” sounds a little strange because we’ve always called him “Digger.” His grandfather, John Sager, told me that his Little League coach named him that because he was always such a hustler on the ball field, always “digging out” infield hits, giving everything he had. Hard work and talent paid off for Digger and made Cecil County proud.

As noted, these lively monikers almost always stick for a lifetime, yet one that did not was applied to Ed Sheridan, the famous Chesapeake Bay ferryboat, tugboat and cruise boat captain. Ed was a stellar athlete as a boy in the twenties. He was the town’s fastest runner and excelled in soccer and baseball. Well, during a baseball game played on the North Side Field (now Titter Park), he did something especially noteworthy. And, perceptive reader, I sure wish that I had been born so I could have seen it along with the other astounded spectators. Ed was playing left field, and in those times most of the townspeople had stables, chicken coops, pig pens, etc. in their back yards. And so, at this point something happened that made this particular game remarkably entertaining, and you need to brace yourself and get set to picture this scene in your mind’s eye.

There were two outs in a closely-fought game in the late innings, and a long foul ball was hit to Ed’s left field position, and Ed, on the run to make the last vital out, watched the ball curving towards a pig pen in someone’s back yard. Leaping over the fence, he just missed catching the ball as it bounced into the muck. After groping around for the ball, he found it and fired it in to the third baseman, who dropped it in disgust and beckoned to the manager to come out and wipe in off. Well, you can imagine the uproar and, after the game, not many remembered who won, but everyone remembered Ed’s left-field leap into fame. From then on he was known as “Piggy.” Never mind how bright he was. Never mind how good an athlete he was. Never mind how accomplished he was to become as a waterman: from then on he was “Piggy.”

But this new name didn’t seem to bother Ed at all. Happy-go-lucky, always telling funny stories about himself and others, and full of laughter at the world, he passed it off as just a peculiar incident of life. However, as you know, nicknames of the fathers are often visited upon the sons, maybe for several generations. And so it was with Ed’s son, Edward, who didn’t like “Piggy,” despised it in fact. But he endured it until the new school year began when he was, oh, about fourteen. That summer had engendered positive changes in Edward. When school began he was no longer an average-sized boy, but a good bit taller, heavier, and muscular than average. Moreover, the transformation didn’t lessen his hatred for the nickname; it enhanced it. And so, on that first day of school, a grim-faced Edward stood by the entrance and snatched the arms of boys about to enter. He pulled them up to his face, looked into their eyes and declared: “If  you know what’s good for you, don’t you ever call me ‘Piggy’ again. My name is Edward!”

          And, don’t you know, that day marked the death of “Piggy.” As a nickname,“Piggy” never again resided with the quick. Not only was Edward’s future son spared the handle, but his father was as well. From then on his father was called “Ed,” “Captain Ed,” or “The Captain.” The story of the “Piggy” nickname, however, has been remembered by certain family members and certain old timers who, with a twinkle in their eyes, passed it on to me. I’m glad they did.