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Lick
Skillet is a name that courses through the history of rural East
Texas. For more than a hundred years or so, it has been attached
to communities, creeks, roads and anything else where people have
a sense of humor.
The name supposedly came about when newcomers arrived late for a
community dinner and found that all of the food had been consumed,
leading someone to admonish them to “lick the skillet.”
You’ll find a road named Lick Skillet running through a couple of
East Texas counties
and there’s a story that Bethany,
which sits on the Texas-Louisiana line southwest of Shreveport,
was once called Lick Skillet. In fact, the town still has a “Lick
Skillet Store.”
Before Crosby in Harris
County was called Crosby, its nickname was Lick Skillet. It
was later renamed for a man who helped bring about the construction
of the railroad through Lick Skillet in 1860.
In Fayettte County,
another Lick Skillet was also known as Alexander’s Voting Place
and Wade’s Post Office. The town was later called Fayetteville
and the town still has a festival known as “Old Lick Skillet Days.”
You will also find a Lick Skillet at the intersection of Highways
143 and 62 in Arkansas.
In Boulder, Colorado, you can take home baked goods at the Lick
Skillet Bakery, shoot wild game with the Lick Skillet Hunt Club
in the Midwest, and buy seeds at the Lick Skillet Seed Company in
another part of the country.
A rock band also calls itself the Lick Skillet and a pathway near
Guntersville, Alabama, is known as the Lick Skillet Trail.
You’ll also find a Lick Skillet Road near Biloxi, Miss. And North
Vernon, Indiana, was also once known as Lick Skillet.
The name of Lick Skillet was also present in Mississippi, Virginia,
California, and other states and communities.
And finally, on the internet you’ll find a cartoon, “The Gentlemen
from Lick Skillet.”
But we haven’t learned of any kids named Lick skillet. If they were,
they probably changed their name as quickly as possible.
Bob
Bowman's East Texas
August 9, 2009 Column.
A weekly column syndicated in 109 East Texas newspapers
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