I believe that names should mean things. Shakespeare once asked would a rose smell as sweet if by any other name. I don’t know, but what I do know is that I found that names can conger up different images than the one intended.
Take, for instance, the name Niagara Falls. Whether it was the young woman in a kasbah in Tunis, Tunisia or the hitchhiker from the Alps of eastern France or the excited naval recruit in North Chicago, IL, the name meant something special — and something different.
Tom Danagher was a recruit from Boston with whom I trained in naval boot camp near Waukegan, Ill., just north of Chicago. The Navy issued us our orders in the final days of our training and no one was more excited than Danagher about their placement when he read the words Niagara Falls. “I’m going to Niagara Falls,” he exclaimed, “I’m going to Niagara Falls!”
I expected Danagher’s mood to turn as blue as were his eyes when I finally calmed him down and explained to him that he was going to ‘the ship’, the four year-old AFS-3, and not the waterfalls themselves. He paused for a moment, took it all in, then looked at me with the same excitement that he had when he thought that he was coming to the waterfall and continued shouting, “I’m going to the USS Niagara Falls. I’m going to the USS Niagara Falls.”
In Tunis I met this beautiful young woman whose dark hair cascaded off her head and softly broke across her tanned shoulders in such a way that it reminded me of the Bridal Veil Falls back home. When I told her that I was from Niagara Falls, her eyes sparkled as if they were filled with the millions of tiny droplets of mist that rise from the base of that waterfall and reflects like crystal in the afternoon sun. She excitedly spoke of Niagara Falls, and though she had not actually been here, she treated me far better than she treated anyone else that day.
As I was leaving work at the old Harrison Radiator plant in Lockport, I saw a back-packed hitchhiker walking westward down Saunders Settlement Road. I knew that he was heading to the waterfalls, and because of how nice others have been to me on faraway roads, I gave him a ride. On the way, I answered Serge’s questions about the city, its tourist sites and its industries. He listened politely. As we crested the bridge over the railroad tracks between the then-CECOS landfill and the Durez plant, I proclaimed, “This, is Niagara Falls.” As he looked out at the steam-belching smokestacks of the factories, the electrical switchyards and their power line-bearing towers, and at Packard Court and the other housing that was splayed out before him, his eyes became as wide as saucers and his jacked jaw rested upon his chin. Because he was from eastern France, his heart swelled with pride when I took special care to show him the DuPont plant along Buffalo Avenue. He thanked me profusely when I dropped him off at the Niagara Reservation. He then looked at me and smiled, saying, “And all that I thought that was here was a waterfall, a hotel and a boardwalk.” Serge was impressed that there was also such an industrial city.
There are those around the country and world that responded to me telling them that I was from Niagara Falls by saying such far-fetched things as, “I didn’t know that they let Canadians into the Navy,” or “I didn’t know that there were black people in Montana.”
A name conjures up images, and oftentimes the images are wrong. But, it is what it is. Even if the word ‘rose’ is applied to an array of flowers.
Ken Hamilton is a Niagara Falls resident. His columns run Fridays in the Gazette. He welcomes feedback at Ken Hamilton930@aol.com.
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HAMILTON: The rose called Niagara Falls
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