What's in a Name?

From the Desk of Clyde Bagwell (Confidential)

To: Ed Wright

Dear Ed: I guess Old Man Bell's stomach has told him that The Thing will sell, and he has decided it is a sports car. I got the first flash on his decision from one of the upstairs gophers in the john this morning and this was later confirmed in the coffeeroom. When I was promoted last year, I got the news the same way, so this is probably official. The Thing weighs about 6000 pounds, but don't let that break you up. There must be other sports cars that weigh that much. I also got the word from his secretary that he is preparing a memo to give us all the confidential scoop, and this is going to describe the car as "long...lithe...youthful...road-hugging..." etc. At 6000 pounds, it should hug the road, I'd say.

I guess you know what is coming next. Right about now, he is sharpening his thumb to a fine point, and as soon as he announces to us that he is going to build The Thing, he is going to shove that thumb in our eye about to the second knuckle until we come up with a name for it. So hit it. Get the boys and girls started on that name. Now.

Clyde

Interdepartmental Memo (Confidential)

To: Clyde Bagwell

Clyde: Calling it a sports car catches me flat-footed. With no disrespect to the corporation, of course, I thought The Thing's chassis looked more like a railroad gondola. I think I've got a bad case of mangled emotions right now, because all I can think of is Watkins Glen, and that seems kind of unwieldy for a sports-car name. If we follow the lead of the other automobile companies on car names, we better get somebody out researching the zoo and the aquarium. I guess I need some direction here.

Ed

From the Desk of Clyde Bagwell (Confidential)

To: Ed Wright

Dear Ed: In case you don't know, this car name has got to be what I cleverly call Exhibition J. Manly. What I mean is, D. D. Bell sees through his gonads darkly. Lots of sword-and-buckler. Sort of Horatius-at-the-Bridge image. It has got to be hairy-arms-manly or he won't buy it. I've been with him a year now, and along with this thing he has about being able to feel good styling in his stomach, he's got a lot of other what you might call foibles. I pray to God every day that I know them all, because at any time I might trample on something he thinks is precious and commit corporation harakiri.

So here are some of the names he won't buy. Stay away from Greek-warrior names, or anything Greek, for that matter. He hates all Greeks and guys who wear white socks. Also, stay away from explorer names. He thinks it was just a fluke that Cadillac made it, because LaSalle, Marquette, Hudson and De Soto didn't. He is death on anything French, because he thinks it has effeminate overtones in this country, and he thinks the guys at Buick flipped their gourd when they got into it. Lastly, for God's sake, don't say Viking. He has a real thing about Viking anything. Two companies built Viking cars and both became orphans. GM built the last one, and the Old Man's got a picture of it on the wall. That may be why he left GM. I don't know and I sure as hell won't ask him, either.

One last thing. Clear any names that seem the least bit flakey with that creep named Schultz in Legal. He works for McGroggin and does all the possible dirty-story or bar-joke research. Somebody says this guy Schultz is the father of all dirty stories and the only reason McGroggin hired him is that it takes one to know one. It grabs me sometimes to think that in this civilization we get salary grade eight for being experts on evilthink.

Well, I leave you there. I guess I narrowed your field a little, but keep trying. We still haven't got the official memo.

Clyde

Interdepartmental Memo (Confidential)

To: Clyde Bagwell

Clyde: How about Indians?

Ed

From the Desk of Clyde Bagwell (Confidential)

To: Ed Wright

Dear Ed: GM has sewed up most of the Indians, I think, except Potawatomi, and who in hell could use that for a car name? Haven't (continued on page 208)What's in a Name?(continued from page 149) those two beetlebrains George Schemanske and Ralph Schlock turned up anything? They still work for you, I assume?

Clyde

Interdepartmental Memo (Confidential)

To: Clyde Bagwell

Clyde: Schemanske and Schlock seem to be letting me down on getting names from their sections. Schemanske can't seem to remember that I'm the boss. I was needling him on the phone today about getting on the ball about this name thing and he wound up by needling me about my last golf score so bad that I hung up on him. He doesn't give a damn who he makes fun of--me, the corporation, the Old Man, anybody. What I wouldn't give to shut his water off.

Ed

From the Desk of Clyde Bagwell (Confidential)

To: Ed Wright

Dear Ed: You know perfectly well that you'll have to live with Schemanske. Let me remind you that his grandfather was Iron Pants Schemanske and he needled his way up from a coremaker in the foundry to executive vice-president and a major stockholder of this corporation before he retired. George is pretty sharp in his own right, though, and I think he'll give you a lot of help if you can get him to stop telling Polack jokes on himself.

Look, something strange and awful happened upstairs, in case you don't know. Snake-Eyes Fletcher, the guy who heads up our computer gang of bus.-ad. brains, has just moved into a new office next door to the Old Man. In fact, they cut down the Old Man's space to make room for Fletcher's office. I guess you know that Snake-Eyes is the number-one faucet man in this corporation. His specialty is cutting people's water off, and right now I wonder (and probably the Old Man does, too) if the Old Man is going to get his faucet turned. Or, even worse, is Fletcher going to start shaking the grates under our salaried personnel? I heard he's got this theory that you can always shake out 2000 salaried people and show a profit that way, if no other. Anyway, I get the feeling that this "sports" car has got to move, or else, and Snake-Eyes Fletcher is here to see that it does.

I hate to see the computer gang move in on the Old Man. He is a wild-ass Khrushchev individualist type, with guts out of his ears, but he's up against the collective-intelligence anthill committee-think people, and sooner or later Snake-Eyes Fletcher will crap him out. I know that I'm dead, too, unless I study business ad., but I don't see how in hell I can ever dress like a licensed embalmer and play it from Grimsville like the computer gang.

I know it sounds corny as hell, but let's get on this name thing for the Old Man, if for no other reason than to save his ass.

Clyde

Interdepartmental Memo (Confidential)

To: Clyde Bagwell

Clyde: How about letting me replace Schemanske with Schlock? Schemanske has bottlenecked me about up to the ears. He topped it all off with a real juicy one today. I sent him a memo reminding him that the Old Man was about due to announce building of The Thing and he sent me back a memo asking me if it was true the Old Man was called Ding Dong behind his back. This he put in writing!

Ed

From the Desk of Clyde Bagwell (Confidential)

To: Ed Wright

Dear Ed: Schlock is strictly a light-weight. He scares too easy and is what the Old Man calls a wimp-ass. He is listed "acceptable" on his personnel review for the job he's got and he'll be there quite a while. I know Schemanske is a problem, and the first chance I get to "accidentally" waylay him in the coffee-room, I'll cool him. In the meantime, Names...remember?

Clyde

From the Desk of Clyde Bagwell (Confidential)

To: Ed Wright

Dear Ed: That awful silence from your department had better end, because we are locked in for sure now. I attended the styling meeting this afternoon. Snake-Eyes Fletcher was there in his black suit and rimless glasses and computer-type haircut. The Old Man called me by name. Fletcher looked at me. I heard the memory cells go click. Now I know why guys get muscle spasms when they find they are seated next to Snake-Eyes at any kind of meeting, or even at lunch. If he asks you one question you can't answer--look out, you may be dead.

Anyway, the Old Man gave us the official word on The Thing. We are going to build it. He got out his favorite styling template that is actually the curves off Lana Turner's leg. He personally got up on the platform and showed us how the leg-curve template fits all the styling curves on The Thing. He got a big hand from everybody except Fletcher. Fletcher picked his nose. It is amazing what a chill that guy can put on you.

(Incidentally, you'd better shred and burn this and any other memo where I discuss Snake-Eyes. God knows who Fletcher's finks are.) Anyway, as I said, we are officially locked in; and, Edward, we had better produce a name. Produce.

Clyde

Office of the Vice-President (Confidential--Security is Your Responsibility)

Fellow Employees:

I am asking everyone to fall to and help us select a name for a stunning new automobile.

This car will be the most beautiful we have ever produced. It is long, low and lithe in silhouette, and appears to hug the road. Its youthful, sports-car styling is based almost entirely on harmonious, beautiful curves, all mathematically related to one another by means of a styling computer. Very little chrome or ornamentation is used. Even the head lamps are rimless, at Mr. Fletcher's suggestion.

Unfortunately, Mr. Fletcher, who is our new controller, has been unable to allocate any budget for this phase of car development, so we will all be working on our own time, so to speak. Please channel all your ideas through Mr. Clyde Bagwell of my office, for review by Mr. Fletcher and myself.

Thank you,

D. D. Bell, Vice-President--Sales

From the Desk of Clyde Bagwell (Confidential)

To: Ed Wright

Dear Ed: Here it is. I better not find anybody knitting at the foot of the guillotine, either. He put my name in that damn memo, right along with Fletcher's. If you took an ax and cut a hole in my head, right now, all it says in there is names...names...names. It better start raining names. Don't edit them. Just get gobs. What we need now is what is called instant response...so, for God's sake, bear down. I took the dictionary home for the weekend, but so far I'm lost in a desert where all the oases are owned by GM and Ford.

Clyde

Interdepartmental Memo (Confidential)

To: Clyde Bagwell

Clyde: I finally got some action out of George Schemanske, and with all of his usual tact, I might add. It seems he and his people were having lunch the other day and talking about Fletcher. This, he says, led to snake names. They decided Ford had the best snake name sewed up with Cobra, and Chrysler's Barracuda has cut the finny man-killers out from under us. However, kicking around other deadly items (he says), they happened to come up with Scorpion. It seems a rather obvious name, and I suppose someone would have come up with it sooner or later. However, it might be a real winner, although I don't know what Mr. Bell thinks about crabs or whatever a scorpion is.

Ed

From the Desk of Clyde Bagwell (Confidential)

To: Ed Wright

Dear Ed: Absolutely tremendous name. I think. I passed it on to the Old Man and he was real motivated. Really got to waving his arms and then all at once he remembered the styling template based on Lana Turner's leg. When I left him, I had the feeling he was in a short-circuited condition, looking at the template and trying to relate the name of some vicious kind of crab to that set of curves he's hung up on. Hold your left eyebrow and pray that we got a winner. Meanwhile, start waving layoff slips around or do something to get action out of your people. Bear down, Ed. Names.

Clyde

Interdepartmental Memo (Confidential)

To: Clyde Bagwell

Clyde: Here is a suggestion-plan form from a senior-grade kook in Ralph Schlock's department named Horace J. Updyke. Horace is an astronomer, you'll notice, and he's using the suggestion-plan form in case we change our minds about paying, etc. This Centaur star name he suggests seems ballsy as hell. The funny thing is that Horace is a bandy-legged, wispy little guy who'll probably be salary grade five forever.

Ed

From the Desk of Clyde Bagwell (Confidential)

To: Ed Wright

Dear Ed: Centaur hit the Old Man where he lives. When he really gets stoked up, he makes me think of this Al Capp character, Bullmoose, remember? His mustache curls up and his nose kind of spreads wide. You expect him to whinny, sort of. Anyway, he was going great guns, prancing around the office, and Fletcher, who was haunting him, was just sitting there. Remember the day the Old Man told the men's club that if he was an actor, he would call himself Rut Gonad, so that people would get the idea immediately? Well, he was in one of those moods. He said that at heart, he, himself, was a centaur. You know, he says to Snake-Eyes, the upper half of me a man and the lower part some kind of two-legged goat, hoofs and all.

Fletcher let him get all wound up and snorty and then he says: What you are thinking of is a satyr; a centaur is a man mixed up with a horse. He's half horse, says Fletcher, a man from the belly button up. He's half man and half ass.

I was looking at Snake-Eyes when he said this. I felt suddenly cold, like it was the Great Depression again and I had turned into an old man in a threadbare tweed coat selling apples on the street corner. That's how it hit me. It was different with the Old Man.

His ears lit up, bright red, and he made funny, chomping noises. I know he took the Carnegie course and for a second, there, I thought the whole thing might come out of his ears in a little puff of smoke and the Old Man would then do the fastest Jekyll and Hyde you ever saw, regressing clear back to Cro-Magnon man, and belt Fletcher senseless with a chair or something. But he got control of himself, finally, and smiled sweetly as hell at Snake-Eyes, except that his ears were still lit up like Thunderbird tail lamps. Then he just ignored Fletcher and told me to get the research people going on Centaur: It just might be the name. Meantime, he says, keep the names coming.

Clyde

From the Desk of Clyde Bagwell (Confidential)

To: Ed Wright

Listen, Ed, don't ever again get wise with me on the phone like today, when I asked you if your department was out of creative gas and you said yes. This is no time for a serpent's-tooth routine. We are in terrible bad trouble. Legal doesn't buy either Scorpion or Centaur. They think both names are bad for our corporate image: Scorpion because it's a poisonous crab and Centaur because it is a possible dirty-joke bomb, like the Edsel grille. Legal says that in order to get a Centaur, some human being would have to cohabit with a horse, and this corporation can't be found in the position of advocating that. How does that grab you? In addition, that creep Schultz was able to generate at least five dirty stories about a Centaur. They were funny, all right, but I'm glad I'm not Schultz. All in all, the longer I live, the more I see that Legal is the most negative bunch of bastards I ever knew.

On top of it all, Snake-Eyes Fletcher has gotten the Old Man off balance. Otherwise, I'm sure he would just flail hell out of Legal, like he has in the past. I liked Centaur, anyway, and so did the Old Man. But I'm afraid that Fletcher has got him thinking of home and fireside out in Bloomfield Hills and how hard it was to come by.

Ed, you have got to get on the ball and get some names. Give. We are in a sinking condition.

Clyde

Interdepartmental Memo (Confidential)

To: Edward Wright

From: George Schemanske

Dear Ed: You scared Ralph Schlock so bad lately that he's afraid to turn this one in, but his bowling team thought of it, so here goes. The name is Bolide. Bolides are missiles or slung balls. Slung balls ought to fracture Ding Dong.

Your pal, George

Interdepartmental Memo (Confidential)

To: George Schemanske

George: Bolides are also comets or meteors. I checked with Legal, first, wise guy. So it looks like Bolide was a gutter ball, pal. In more ways than one, I might add. Care to try again?

Ed Wright

From the Desk of Clyde Bagwell (Confidential)

To: Ed Wright

Dear Ed: Do you have a girl in your organization named Ann that you can think of? This thing came in my confidential mail and it looks like a winner. See if you can find her, but first read this thing.

Clyde

Gentlemen: (Confidential as all hell, etc.)

Why fight it? The Thing has got to have a woman's name. What kind of a woman's name? Easy. . . What is the tone of this era if it isn't Götterdämmerung--twilight of the gods and all that? Doesn't everyone have a death wish or a death fascination, thinking of the bomb? Or Decoration Day traffic? And aren't we morally just all shot to hell? I think it would be just Freudian as the dickens and sexy as hell in a real wild modern way to give a car a woman's name that was also synonymous with death. You could use Black Widow or Iron Maiden, for instance; but for my money, there's only one that will ever fit this picture, and that's the old Wagnerian smasheroo--the Valkyrie.

Here's what the big dictionary says:

Valkyrie...chooser of the slain...one of Odin's handmaidens who watched over the battlefields, chose those who were to be slain, and conducted to Valhalla the souls of the selected heroes...

Doesn't that give you goose bumps and make your flesh crawl? Wow! What ad possibilities! Think of the singing commercials based on Wagner's opera stuff. It must all be in the public domain and every bit of it stirring as hell! Sample slogan:

Give Your Girlfriend the Old Götterdämmerung in a Valkyrie!

With this kind of promotion, I feel the name has tremendous possibilities. The car might even go over bigger than LSD or pot with the college kiddies. I know its Viking background origins and all that, but it should still be a real smash.

Especially since I understand the car is designed after Lana Turner's leg.

Lovingly, Ann

Interdepartmental Memo (Confidential)

To: Clyde Bagwell

Clyde: What kind of sick crap is this? Somebody in our organization is a real kook. I knew sure as hell that Purchasing would screw us up someday by forcing Personnel to buy those low-budget--type personal-history reports. Somebody should have plowed a little deeper into this Ann's background, whoever she is.

I don't find any Anns on the payroll yet, but guess what is going to hit the fan when I do.

Ed

From the Desk of Clyde Bagwell (Confidential)

To: Ed Wright

Dear Ed: I hate exclamation points, because the goddamn agencies can't send one line of copy in here without larding it from end to end with them like they were knocking out deathless prose with a ball bat. But I am going to allow myself just one. I think we sold Valkyrie!

I figured we were scraping bottom this time, so it was now or never. I knew I could sell Valkyrie to the Old Man if I could belt it hard enough to get his mind off the Viking connection. So I took a hell of a chance and called a meeting, even inviting those finks from Legal. I told the Old Man I wanted to make a presentation of a new name that I thought was a winner and that, further, I wanted to do the presentation in the way that we might do it for the national dealers' convention. I even asked him to have Snake-Eyes Fletcher there. I knew my fanny was a grape if it flopped, but I haven't slept well lately and I was so juiced up I didn't really give a damn.

I needed a real eye-catcher, and for some time now, I have been noticing a new girl working the copying machine on the second floor. She is a temporary employee named Cunegonde Jones, but the boys all call her God-What-a-Bod. Terrific. So I got her released from the job for a day and took her downtown and found a pleated Greek-goddess type of dress that fitted her. Then I taught her to hum Wagner's Evening Star, with lots of chest action. After that, I sneaked her into the styling auditorium where The Thing is and rehearsed her in this routine I had in mind.

I was a little plowed by the time everybody got there for the meeting and got seated. I had hidden a bottle in the clothes closet in case I got nervous, and when Snake-Eyes Fletcher came in, it was like I had suddenly contracted yellow fever, I shook so bad. Anyway, I got everybody seated and the lights out and I got on the microphone. I ran through a quick introduction that I think was sly as hell, because I got around the Viking bit. Then I pushed the buzzer.

For once, everything worked. The curtain slid back and there was The Bod, standing in a dry-ice mist that the fans were blowing just right, so that it looked like she and the car were floating through the clouds. God, what a hummer she turned out to be. Besides that, either she had nothing on under the dress or the lights were brighter than I thought they'd be, because all at once it seemed that everybody in the meeting was a mouth breather or had adenoid trouble. She hummed a few bars and sort of bugaloo-undulated alongside the car and slid into the passenger's seat. I had the tape of The Evening Star plugged into the PA system, and I brought this up loud in a roaring finale and closed the curtain.

The place fell apart. McGroggin himself, from Legal, was there, instead of one of his gophers, and he was even applauding. All the time that the Old Man was pounding me on the back and telling me what a job we'd done, I was trying to keep from breathing bourbon in his face and at the same time trying to get a line on Snake-Eyes Fletcher.

Then I saw him. He had his head poked behind the curtain. Finally, he came down from the stage with God-What-a-Bod in tow, leading her by the hand. She must have attended some kind of school to learn to walk the way she was walking right then. When she got real close, the Old Man kind of jerked and bit his cigar in half. The loose piece fell on the rug and he didn't even notice it.

I looked at Fletcher real close. His eyes had a funny glitter and his lips twitched. His Adam's apple pumped up and down real fast. His glasses began to steam, I think, because he took them off and began to polish them. His hands shook quite a lot. He was standing very close to The Bod.

Then Snake-Eyes grinned, like something funny had hit him. His grin is indescribable. It is something like the kind a tomcat gets when he has gas on his stomach.

"Valkyries always wear chest armor," he says, very loudly.

It got very quiet. And then the Old Man said "Goddamn" several times, each time getting louder and sort of lingering over the syllables.

Snake-Eyes Fletcher giggled. The hair on my neck stood up. Because his giggle sounded like he was some kind of a nut who had found a portable gas chamber and a whole pot full of cyanide pills. For a second, it got awful damn quiet.

Then it hit us. Fletcher was putting us on. Everybody began to laugh in a kind of weak manner, keeping their eyes on Snake-Eyes Fletcher, just in case. So you see, Edward, my boy--Fletcher does have a sense of humor, after all; but what kind it is I can't tell you, because the French government locked up all the works of the Marquis de Sade.

Anyway, it was a smash. When I left the auditorium, all the gophers had been sent back to the offices, and all the wheels were back in a corner with the Old Man, getting some advertising ideas watching The Bod hum The Evening Star.

Oh, yes. The Old Man asked whose idea it was--Valkyrie, I mean--and I said mine. You take it from there.

Clyde

Interdepartmental Memo (Confidential)

To: Clyde Bagwell

Clyde: I left this on your desk while you were out. When you read it, you'll see why I hand-carried it personally.

Our gal Ann turns out to be Joe the mailboy. How does that grab you? Maybe Personnel will listen to me next time I tell them that when I ask for a mailboy, I want a mailboy, not a com.skills major from Michigan State.

After I really started shaking the grates in the department, he came forward and said he did it. Seems he got hung up (he says) on reading the confidential mail he was carrying, because it was such lousy prose style. He says he got to feeling sorry for us while we were trying to find a name, and he thought he would sneak in Valkyrie just for laughs. He thought it would be cute to sign the letter "Ann," as short for Anonymous. We had quite a session. What do I do now?

Ed

From the Desk of Clyde Bagwell (Confidential)

To: Ed Wright

Dear Ed: (I send you this by means of my new helper.) Turn his water off. That's what you do. It solves everything.

Clyde

Interdepartmental Memo (Confidential)

To: Clyde Bagwell

Clyde: (You're right about God-What-a-Bod. What a helper she is going to be! I wish I had one.) I'll proceed with Operation Faucet, per your suggestion.

Ed

From the Desk of Clyde Bagwell (Confidential)

To: Ed Wright

Dear Ed: I have been working so hard lately that the Old Man has decided I should get some rest by taking a small unit out to the West Coast with the Valkyrie prototype to get some sneak background shots with mountain backdrops, beach scenes, etc., for the preannouncement show. I am, naturally, taking my new helper along as a kind of girl Friday. I expect you to have the faucet turned by the time I get back.

Clyde

Mr. Clyde Bagwell, C/O The Arabian Nights Motel, Los Angeles, California 6828321

Privileged and Confidential

Dear Clyde:

I made our boy "available for transfer" today. When I filled out the Form 101, I put the secret mark on it. He'll probably be sent around to five or six different departments by Personnel for interviews, but nobody will pick him up, because I put the "undesirable" sign on the 101. One of the do-gooders from Personnel called me on the phone about putting the Indian sign on the kid and I told him we suspected the kid of being a Chevrolet spy. That ripped it. I had a dirtier one up my sleeve, but I didn't have to use it. I was going to tell them that he secretly called himself "Ann." That would have really cooked his goose.

I certainly hope that you and your helper are getting rested up. Your wife called today to ask if I had heard from you. At the time she called, I was reviewing all our confidential correspondence on the Valkyrie. I must say that it makes interesting reading and I think I'll keep it under lock and key just for the hell of it. I wouldn't want Mr. Fletcher to see it.

Your friend, Ed

The Arabian Nights Motel

The George Spelvin Agency, P.O. Box 1612--Harding Annex, Detroit, Michigan

Dear Mr. Spelvin:

I can't thank you enough for this "fact-finding" assignment. Who would have thought it would lead to California? It has been most interesting.

I am separately mailing about two pounds of 8 x 10 glossy prints of myself and the Valkyrie that one of the photographers made for me. The dear boy and I have been all over this part of the country and we have had a real ball.

I think I have gotten much more information for your client than ever I could have gotten running the copying machine, and Mr. Bagwell has been real fun. I will regret leaving you this fall, as much as I do leaving this crazy automobile business, which is really something like the dancing sickness of the Middle Ages. But I must be getting on with my master's in education. Just keep sending the checks to Mother.

Sincerely yours, Cunegonde Jones