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Show GETTING ON THE MAP Chapter VIII What Father quickly focused on was obtaining a post office. That was a grave need for our community sprawling over 200 square miles of barrens. We did not have the paved roads and autos that have killed many a crossroads hamlet. We had no roads at all, only wheeltracks wandering and bumping over hummocks. We had no cars at first except the "Sears" that the Dinwiddie family near Blue Mountain must have got by mail order. It looked like a buggy without a horse, but the one-lunger motor and the trails were so bad that, more often than not, the car came home behind a horse anyway. We had no telephones, no telegraph office. What to call the new post office? Father pondered as he filled out the application forms. We were not strictly committed to "Nada," even though the sign beside our sidetrack had borne that name since the railroad began. Our store was a mile northeast up the track. And some of us disliked the name because newcomers and visitors always assumed we didn't know the Spanish meaning, "Nothing," and they bubbled over with glee at imparting the huge joke to us in our ignorance. It didn't lend itself to promotion, which the community felt as an obligation of a booming, or at least aspiring town. Our nearest neighbors, the Kleins, proposed the name they had given their claim: Grandview. They had no sooner moved into their tiny homestead shack than they raised between two tall juniper poles a banner bearing the words "Grandview Ranche," the Spanish note being regarded fitting for the Escalante Valley. To have the new town named after their "ranche" would make them leading citizens. We received as many name proposals as customers Father consulted. Even the first salesman to visit the store, a genial gentleman named Pickell who dropped off the evening local at the time, suggested one: Algo. That meant "Something" in Spanish, he |
