Vince Staten: The Nicknamer

Tony Drakos as a senior in high school

My class - D-B '65 - lost a treasured classmate on May 13. Tony Drakos died that day at age 78.

Maybe Tony wasn't named Most Popular on Class Day but he was popular. Everyone knew Tony, that big smile, ever ready with a wisecrack.

I just had dinner with Tony and Bruce Haney a few months ago and Tony was as sharp as ever, full of stories.

As always with Tony, I learned something new. I knew Tony was a star baseball player, second baseman on D-B's state tournament team. I knew he was a champion billiards player, top in his age group in the Boys Club Upper East Tennessee tournament.

I did not know Tony was a top notch violinist, who was performing with the Kingsport Symphony Orchestra while he was still in junior high. He would have continued if not for an incident one day after baseball practice. A football player saw him carrying his violin case and began making fun of him. Ridicule is tough to handle for any 14-year-old and Tony went home and announced he was giving up the violin to concentrate on baseball.

Tony was famous to his classmates for one more thing: nicknames. He gave half the members of the class of '65 their nicknames, most famously he named Eddie Grills "Ratt." Eddie is in my phone's directory, not as Eddie, but as Ratt.

In 2004 I wrote a column for the Kingsport Times-News about nicknames and Tony was the star of the column!

Here it is:

To his mother, he’s Eddie.

But to his pals, he’s “Ratt,” and has been since the 9th grade.

Joe King was Joseph on the class roll but “Winger” in the locker room.

Nicknames used to be a big part of growing up. Kids were proud of their nick-names. I remember Enos Lord stood up in seventh grade art class and corrected Mr. Buchanan, “Call me ‘Junebug.’”

Lynn Johnson (D-B ’58) remembers the nicknames from his youth. “Bob Strickler was a year behind me in school and from the earliest days we called him ‘Pot.’ A lovely girl in my class, Mary Belle Cox, was known as ‘Mert.’ Dr. Bill Locke, President of Northeast State, was known as ‘Cooter.’ Charles Sproles, an excellent football player at D-B in the early 60's, was known as ‘Poochie.’ Kenneth Cross, a dentist from my class, was known as ‘Bump.’ Of course, we had some nicknames for coaches, teachers and principals that are not very flattering so I won't mention those.”

Name calling was an honor not a disgrace.

I played high school basketball with a Snake, a Putty Butt, a Scrounge and a Zora Molla. And they all answered to those nicknames.

Snake wasn’t sneaky, he was six-six and lanky; Putty Butt was slow; Scrounge was always diving on the floor; and Zora Molla took his name from his favorite fighter, Zora Folley.

Now those were nicknames. Not like the nicknames of today.

Pro basketball player Kevin Garnett has got game. But his nickname - K.G. - doesn’t. It’s uninspired and nondescript.

That’s the trend now: call someone by initials. How inventive. Allen Iverson is A.I. Jennifer Lopez is J-Lo.

If Carl Switzer were to arrive in Hollywood today, he would probably be tagged “Cee.” Or maybe the even less imaginative nickname “C.S.” Fortunately Switzer arrived six decades ago and was given the forever-memorable moniker “Alfalfa.” (His hair looked like alfalfa.)

Had John Wayne been born a half century later he would probably have been nicknamed “J.W.” Or even worse, “J-Way.” Not the Duke.

But something happened, a laziness of language. Strong, descriptive nicknames have gone away.

And that’s how it is that the greatest basketball player of the last 20 years is nicknamed “M.J.”

M.J.

How long did it take you to come up with that one?

We cherished our nicknames.

Sometimes kids wanted a nickname so badly that they would create one. Johnson says Melvin Joseph nicknamed himself “Jose” by writing the name on his football helmet. “Melvin was a freshman Spanish student at the time. Jose was Spanish for Joseph.”

But usually the nickname comes from someone else.

In my day one kid was responsible for most of the name-calling, Tony Drakos.

I asked Tony the other day how he came to be the Arbiter of the Epithet. (Actually I asked him why he gave so many people their nicknames.)

“It may have been partly a reaction to my own nickname. Everybody called me ‘Greek.’”

His first nickname was 'Carson Oats' for Allan Rice. Tony doesn’t remember where it came from but you can see a logic: Rice, Oats. “But once I figured out I could get away with it, I just kept doing it.” He nicknamed Eddie “Ratt” and Joe “Winger.”

And when Eddie balked at being called “Ratt” Tony assured him it was okay.

Eddie says, “Tony told me it was spelled with two t’s and that if you pronounced it backwards it was Ta-Tar!”

And who wouldn’t want to be nicknamed Ta-Tar!