Trash
Recruitment
[Ed: Ostrich said…]
Because of my close association with Trash, I can comment on his nom and history. He started the club 14 months before me, brought in by Nightowl, and by Trash's friend Tealeaf (Steve Reid), who was courted by Pen Gwyn but who never joined. (It would be inaccurate, though, to draw a direct line from Pen Gwyn to Trash.) Tealeaf is a childhood pronunciation of “Steve”. Trash joined as Dirty Jack (J. W. Miles), and his introduction (worth rereading, May 1988) explicated that nom humorously: he presented himself as Don Vito Corleone and explained that Dirty Jack (from Dirty Harry, and Jack, his long-time nickname) was an alter ego from the family compound who was assigned to handle Mafia matters relating to the NPL. (Jack has long held the theory of the movie A Thousand Clowns, that a thousand different personalities lurk in every one of us like clowns in a Volkswagen.) About the time of his move to Vermont he changed his identity to another alter ego, Harvey (Victor Y. Hare). This is a complex wordplay, tying together Jack-rabbit, Harvey the Pukka (V. Y. Hare anagram), another Hare, and of course Bugs Bunny in the cartoon Victory by Hare Power. I probably left one rabbit out. Trash (Travis Ashley) was an alter ego who arrived well before Harvey, but who was run simultaneously out of Vermont by Travis's father Eric Ashley; Travis Ashley is Jack's godgrandson, and the nom is an obvious “found acrostic”. Jack also briefly used the nom Track, a combinom of Trash and Dirty Jack. Eventually he worked solely from the nom Trash.
Jack's real name is John W Meyles; he does not like addressing people by noms, because “we are people first”; and his address is always correct in the Directory.
Trash was also responsible for quite a few more members who did not hold much staying power:
- Bee Barker, of E. Brewster, MA;
- Dale C. Cook, who only lapsed last year;
- Jaws-2 (Barbara Ward), his wife;
- Eileen Nugent, of Northfield, NJ; and
- PS.P (Rose Friedman), who took the nom from the nickname of Jack's dog, “Peyton S. Paniel” (the full name of Peyton the Springer spaniel is actually Dudley Lawrence Alexander Peyton, unless I have inverted the middle two names).
Several of these names did not make it into any directory; try the monthly new members lists.
Source: email from Ostrich.
First issue: Jan 1988
Recruits
Nom
Covered well by the text in Recruitment.
Previous Noms:
- Dirty Jack
- Harvey
Combinoms
[Ed: Ostrich said…]
The two of us had for some years coheld the pseudonom Dumbo, A., of W. Nowhere, MA, as a secret identity, eventually discovered by Sibyl. That nom is an even more complex game; it is arrived at by “transposition, translation, and retransposition”.
The first confirm is that, reading from the center, “mud” clues Dirty Jack and “boa” [feathers] clues Ostrich. Now transpose DUM and BOA to their only arrangements in The Wordbook, mud and abo. You might note that the headwords in 9C where these two words are found include “mover” and “abjurer”.
The second confirm is the city, “W. Nowhere”, since W. is “Mover” and Nowhere is a Caesar shift of “abjurer”. (Massachusetts was chosen only because we could make that a convenient anonymous mailing point.) Next, translate “mud” and “abo” by counting 16 entries backwards from each in 9C (counting heteronyms as one entry), which brings you the the equal-length “muck” and “able”.
For the third confirm, muck and able are in Baus under DIRT and RICH, elements of a straight Dirty Jack/Ostrich combinom. Finally, transpose “muckable” into “black emu”, which is the final confirm: dirty black, black jack, and emu/ostrich. This set of convolutions was dreamed up by ourselves over a Palm Beach County weekend that had way too much time in it.
Source: email from Ostrich.
Offices
No data.
