BETHEL — Choosing a child’s name feels like the first major responsibility of parenthood. But once children arrive, they tend to defy expectations and make their own mark on the world.

As they grow into their unique personalities, identifiers sometimes change, too. This story is about nicknames but also about the beauty and creativity of chosen names.

The little tinkerer

Virgil “Tink” Conkright was curious about his grandmother’s wringer washing machine, so as a 2-year-old he climbed beneath it to check “under the hood” as he had seen his father do when repairing the family car.

Upon seeing his curiosity, Conkright’s maternal grandmother, “Dell,” gave him the nickname Little Tinkerer.

“I never liked the name Virgil anyway,” he said.

When Conkright was in grade school, he continued to be curious. He lived with his grandparents for several years and remembers, as a-5 year-old, getting into the driver’s seat of his grandfather’s Ford truck and jamming the cattle body into the roof of the garage.

“My grandfather had a farm and there was always something we had to fiddle with. He never bought anything new. There was always something that had to be fixed,” Conkright said. “The biggest punishment I could get was, ‘You can’t go to your grandparents’ for five days.'”

The Little Tinkerer evolved into Tinkerer or more often, Tink.

“When I was in junior high school, some kids put a ‘d’ in front of my name. It didn’t bother me too much, I probably did the same thing to someone else,” he said.

He worked as an excavator, was in the lawn care business and for many years was a school bus mechanic. For 52 years he was into auto racing, as a driver until he broke his leg, then as an official.

These days, the Newry selectman, said he still tinkers, “but only on my own stuff.” He recently replaced the power steering pump and hoses in his pickup truck. “Sometimes I get tired of it because I held wrenches for so many years.”

‘Call me Macky’

Eleven-year-old Mylan “Buddy” Herbert felt so bad for his newborn sister, Mildred Ada, that he immediately nicknamed her Mac.

“I’m not a Mildred. My grandmother sewed and knit, and I hunt and fish and golf,” said Macky Chapman of Bethel.

“She just thought up the weirdest names,” said Macky, of her mother’s decision to name her Mildred Ada and her brother Mylan.

The Ada was for her other grandmother, Ada Valentine, who raised her.

“My mother worked all the time. We stayed with (Ada) for the summer, from June to September,” at their camp on North Pond. The rest of the year Macky lived in New Jersey, where the teachers often called her Mildred.

“I hated it whenever anyone called me Mildred,” she said.

“I really wasn’t a city girl,” she said. When they finally moved to Bethel in her junior year of high school, she never went back and was happy that her teachers in Bethel mostly remembered to call her Macky.

Emma and Snappy

Dwight “Emma” Mills grew up on Bird Hill Road in Greenwood. At the top of the hill in a little camp, lived Doggy Swan and his wife, Emma.

“The story goes that my friend, Dingy, and I, we were little kids, we put mud in her washing machine. Someone ended up naming me Emma for Emma Swan.”

Mills remembers that his father’s nickname in later years was Snappy.

“He was slow and moderate. You had to sight by a post to see if he was moving,” Mills said. His father’s real name was Edward Lee and for 25 years, he owned Lee’s Variety in Locke Mills where The Local Hub is now. He would sit at the desk out back and play with a CB radio. If someone came in, he would very slowly walk to the front of the store — not at all snappy.

“I have always been fascinated with some of the names people ended up with,” Mills said. “It’s pretty amazing. My nickname is pretty lame. It’s not really funny at all. But gee whiz, when you got somebody named Fruity or Gummy or Baldy or Pigpen. You have to say, ‘What’s going on?'”

Indeed, Mills had three friends all with the nickname Butch. One was Butch Fuller.

Not so tough

“My uncle Bill gave me that name when I was about six months old, Butch Fuller said. “He thought that I looked like a little tough guy.” Fuller, of Greenwood, said he is not the tough guy his uncle predicted he would be.

Butch, Shagdog, and Poopdeck were his friend’s names.

To thine self be true

In 2019, Birch Allen was seriously injured in a work accident.

“Since then, I have been going through a lot of recovery and changes and finding out about myself and going through self-actualization,” they said. “I wanted something to reflect that.”

Allen, who goes by the pronouns “they/them,” knows a lot of people who have chosen their own names. People they know who are trans or gender nonconforming will ask that you never mention their dead name (name given at birth) to them, Allen said.

“I don’t really feel that my given name was a bad thing,” they said. “It just didn’t reflect where I was in my life anymore.”

The head injury they sustained from a split-rim tire explosion changed their life. Before the accident, Allen was a laborer, arborist, farmer and carpenter. “I can’t do any of those things anymore.”

Allen liked the work they were doing, “but there was a cultural aspect I never identified with … now that I can’t do that work, I find myself embracing my femininity more. It is the silver lining from having a massive head injury.”

As a child, Allen and their siblings liked “riding” birch trees. “Birches are an amazing tree. they are flexible and will grow in places that no other tree will grow.”

In art school they used birch for art projects. Birch as a chosen name was a natural choice for Allen.

Allen knows many people with unusual nicknames from the days when they train-hopped: Banjo, Possum, Blue, Slam and Sidewalk.

Every type of hat

Harry Orcutt said his political name, “Hats,” was given to him by one of the best Democratic operative campaign managers in Massachusetts in the early 1980s.

At the Democratic headquarters, “I put Republican leaflets on the windshield of every car of their headquarters. They took a picture and wrote on the bottom, “‘Who is Hats?””

Susan, his spouse, said Hats has an endless collection of headwear. Some are in boxes because he uses them for reenactments. He takes special pride in his two coonskin hats.

“I have every type of hat. Revolutionary war, civil war, patriotic hats,” he said.

“I’m going to show you I’m not dumb”

Denny Dimwit was a cartoon character with a pointed head popular around the time that Diane Howe, of Bethel, was born.

“My parents, both of them were guilty,” she said, “because when I was born my mother had a difficult labor. My dad almost passed out when he looked down the first time. My head came right up to a point,” said Howe, who was the first baby for Elsie and Peter Seames.

“My aunt named me ‘Duncie,'” probably because of the Denny Dimwit nickname.

It never really bothered her. Said Howe, “It was a joke. I remember telling my aunt one day, I am going to show you that I am not dumb.”

Show them, she did. Howe worked as a chief financial officer of the Progress Center in Norway and was also a select board member. Since 1983, she has been a tax preparer with a customer base of over 150 people.

In addition to her math acumen, “Denny was a fabulous dowser. She was incredible. She even dowsed metal tools,” said Dwight Mills, her Greenwood classmate.

Dill Pickle and Ninnie are two of her grandchildren.

Some names not fit for print

“Duffy” Ellsworth’s birth name is Warren Ellsworth, but he’s never been known by that name because right at birth his dad tagged him with Duffy.

Why? Because he had a military buddy named Duffy and liked the name. Duffy Ellsworth is retired now, but as a Norway police officer he had many colleagues with nicknames.

“Those nicknames are not fit for print,” he said.

For all the others, the Busters, Buzzies, Sissies, Golden Boys, Pickles, Bones, Black Bombers, Spikes, Punkies, Tubbys, Jugheads, Peanuts, Honeys, Tweets, Cabbages, Peasies, Satches, Snaps, Pumpers, Weasels, and Peckys not included here: next time!

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