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Name
of This Town Rings A Bell
Ding Dong, Texas
by Clay Coppedge
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Just
because Ding
Dong is in Bell County doesn't mean those two facts have anything
to do with each other. If you think it does you're either half-right
or half-wrong, depending on your disposition.
Ding
Dong was named for a Bell all right, but not Peter Hansborough
Bell, the third governor of Texas and the man for whom Bell County
is named. Nor is it named for the "Ding Dong Daddy of Dumas" or the
junk food of the same name. The Wicked Witch did not die there. Ask
not for whom the bell ding dongs . . .
According to historical accounts, the Bells in question were Zulis
Bell and his nephew Bert Bell. In the early 1930s the two Bells bought
and ran a country store on the Lampasas River about midway between
Killeen and Florence, at a place then known as McBryde Crossing.
The Bells hired a talented sign painter by the name of C.C. Hoover
to paint the sign for their new store. But Hoover was no mere sign
painter. He had done some fine oil paintings and could draw as well
as letter. Fred Foster at Stokes-Blair Hardware Company in Florence
knew of Hoover's talent so when the young man showed up at Foster's
store to buy paint for the job, Foster advised him to put his creative
talents to use.
"Why don't you do something original with this sign," he suggested
to Hoover. "How about drawing two Bells with the name Zulis in one
and Bert in the other. Then print 'Ding Dong' on the sign." In this
manner manner, the deed was done. The little community around the
store took on the name of Ding
Dong, and there you have it.
Just because Ding
Dong has made a name for itself by, well, the way it named itself
doesn't mean it's easy to find. You don't even have to blink to miss
it. You can be looking for it and still miss it. A couple of dozen
people have a Ding Dong address. The 777 Estates lists a Ding Dong
address, but that subdivision is on the outskirts of Ding Dong, not
Ding Dong proper. If you pass the turn to Maxdale -- FM 2670 -- you
have gone too far.
Ding
Dong first came to the attention of wider America via the syndicated
feature "Ripley's Believe It Or Not," which gave the town its 15 minutes
of fame. Travel writer Bill Bryson mentioned the town in his book,
Made In America. Another book, Passing Gas: And Other Towns Along
The American Highway by photographer Gary Gladstone, pays tribute
to Ding Dong with a photograph of carpet salesman and fire chief Harold
Rowe posed in front of his fire truck in Ding Dong.
Jim Bowmer of Temple,
who wrote the book The Unknown Bell County about local folklore and
legends, remembers that Hugh Farr, a fiddler for the Sons of the Pioneers,
told the audience of a Johnny Carson Tonight Show that he was raised
in Llano,
Texas but born in Ding
Dong, in Bell County. Noted conductor Walter Winchell, when asked
whom he believed to be the greatest natural violinist of the 20th
Century, named Fritz Kreisler for his left hand and "the right hand
of that gentleman who plays violin with the Sons of the Pioneers,
I don't recall his name."
That would be Hugh Farr, from Ding Dong, Texas.
Late Dallas newspaper columnist Frank X. Tolbert stumbled across Ding
Dong in his wanderings around the state and thought it was a shame
the town did not have its own bell. What was a Ding Dong without a
bell? With Tolbert's urging, the town received a bell from the Santa
Fe Railroad in 1962. It weighed 250 pounds and was given to the unofficial
mayor of Ding Dong, Charlie Hold, by two Santa Fe vice presidents.
Hold took over the store from the Bells in 1950. Hold told Tolbert,
"That big red-mouthed bell you got our town has been kindly of a mixed
blessing. A lot of smart jacks stop off here and rings that bell at
all hours of the day and night. Gets mighty bothersome."
Ding Dong's last moment in the spotlight came in 1964, when members
of the Killeen Lions Club International tried, as a joke, to secure
Ding Dong as the site of the district convention. Mayor Hold was said
to be none too happy about it.
As Gladstone's book makes clear, Tennessee takes the prize for State
With the Weirdest Names. Texas is a close second, but it's hard to
compete with Sweetlips, Gizzard's Cove, Suck Egg, Bucksnort, Dull,
Only, Peeled, Chestnut, Nutbush, Defeated and Nameless.
They don't name 'em like that anymore, which may be a good thing.
But in becoming too sophisticated to call our homeland Ding
Dong or Suck Egg, we find our refinement may have come at the
expense of a peculiarly American sense of humor. |
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