A Stranger from Cut and Shoot, Texas
Dear Diary:
You never know who you’ll meet in
Gotham or where they’re from, be it an exotic locale like Hong Kong or Buenos Aires
or Paris or, well, Madison, Wis., which was a first for me. And then there’s
Cut and Shoot, Tex.
“Only one I know!” proclaimed the
colleague who introduced us.
“Back when I grew up, there were
only 20 people living in that town,” the native of Cut and Shoot said. “I’m so
happy not to be there. I love New York City.”
Well, I looked it up. The population
of Cut and Shoot is now over 1,000, which is just about the size of a few
apartment buildings on the Upper West Side. She told me how the town acquired
its name.
“Well, it’s Texas,” she said.
Apparently, Cut and Shoot is named
after some disagreement among residents back in 1912 — the reason differs
depending on the source, she added — but got its name when a young boy at the
scene of the brouhaha announced: “I’m going to cut around the corner and shoot
through the bushes in a minute.” No cutting or shooting occurred that day.
I gave this some thought.
“If the town were being settled
now,” I surmised, “in this era of technology, perhaps it could be called Cut
and Paste.”
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