By Charles Melton
Melton’s Musings
Over the last 51 years, I have lived tons of places, met tons of amazing people, done some pretty unusual things, but I haven’t accumulated a lot of material things. Moving as much as I have isn’t conducive to that, especially since as a former U.S. Army infantryman, I believe in packing as lightly as possible. Don’t worry about stuff being thrown away, because I always give away as many things as I can before I make a move. The one lasting thing I have gathered in my many travels is a ton of nicknames.
Those nicknames are lasting reminders of where I’ve been, what I’ve done and the great, lasting relationships I’ve built along the way. They’re how I know immediately where I know someone from, and although I don’t have a Hutchinson/Reno County nickname yet, I’m confident that eventually I’ll be given one that fits. It’s always a challenge to figure out the best way to properly order a list of any kind, so in this case I’ll start with the most unusual and work my way from there.
Zoo. Yes, there is a group of people to whom I will always be known as Zoo. Former U.S. Army Corps of Engineers New Orleans District Commander Col. Murphy came up to me at an event in the bayou and asked if he could call me Zoo. He noticed that I couldn’t turn my head to the right very far after my third neck surgery so I reminded him of a character in the movie, “Zoolander.” I had no problem with it, so from that day on every time he saw me, he would yell, “Zoooooo!” and I would respond, “Hi, Sir!”
El Fuego and El Maquina. Yes, I have Hispanic nicknames as well. A Honduran pastor in East Los Angeles tagged me as El Fuego during the trip I took for spring break of my senior year at Texas Tech University. One afternoon as I was putting stucco on his church building he came up to me and told me that I had a fire like no one else and that I was “el fuego.” That was about 30 years ago and the fire still burns. El Maquina was the nickname I picked up in DC because when it came to pulling off miracles on impossible deadlines I simply became a machine and operated with a speed and accuracy level that few humans can match.
Big C has been my nickname since 1993 when Joe Trammell aka Little Joe from Childress, Texas, gave it to me as soon as I arrived in Lubbock. Joe is shorter than I am, so the Big C/Little Joe thing works. When I was in DC, he and I would smoke cigars and enjoy drinks at Shelly’s Backroom in downtown DC.
Legend. Yes, there are a couple of groups who call me Legend for reasons that I’ll let them explain in detail themselves. My last college roommate, Casey Stackhouse, calls me Legend because of the legendary things I’ve done over the years, some of which are “hold my beer” instead of “this is a smart thing to do.” The other group resides in Jacksonville, Texas, and my good friend Oscar Tyler has told them enough stories about me to cause them to simply call me Legend.
The last one is Flops. It took me wearing Bob Marley hemp flip flops in four inches of snow in Salt Lake City at Veterans Affairs conference to impress the ladies for me to earn this one. My feet were ice cubes but I never once put on a pair of socks. I even moonwalked in the snow just to prove that my feet weren’t cold. Those two ladies are good friends of mine to this day, so it was worth it.
Finally, here are a few of the others that you’ll have to ask me about at the next Brews with the News event from 5 to 7 p.m., Friday, March 6 at Sandhills Brewing in downtown Hutchinson. Chucky, Scoop, John Boy, Tex, Peter and disingenuous s.o.b.
Charles Melton is the news editor of The Hutchinson Tribune. He can be reached at charles@hutchtribune.com.