All you need is a state highway map or road atlas and a little imagination. If you’re a high-tech traveler, you can probably use the map on your GPS unit or laptop computer.
Here’s the background for the game: Every high school, college or pro sports team has a mascot or a nickname. Perhaps it’s one of the perennial favorites, such as lions, tigers or bears, cowboys or Indians, or a regional term such as Packers, Yankees or Lakers.
Now, take out that highway map or road atlas, find the index, and start looking for towns that are good candidates for mascots you’re not likely to see painted on the local water tower.
Just for fun, see who in your group can come up with the first — or the zaniest — logical match for a “mascot” for some of the towns on the map. To get you started, I’ll give you a few examples from one of my recent road trips.
I trust the residents of the following actual towns will take this in a spirit of fun, but I’ll be judicious and won’t identify the state in which Dixie, Fender, Hasty, Nail, Ozone, Romance, Welcome, and Mist are found.
In a round of Mascot Mayhem, perhaps the local team for those locations could be known as the:
- Fender Benders
- Hasty Decisions
- Nail Clippers
- Ozone Layers
- Romance Novels
- Welcome Mats
If you’re an advanced wordsmith, you can even take a little liberty with the spelling, as in:
- Mist Opportunities
Okay, surely you can come up with some good ones of your own! Feel free to share your favorites as a comment below. The only rules for this blog are that the names have to be rated “G” and the towns must be real locations on a map.
Jim Burnett
Life – it’s an adventure…. Find something to smile about today!
Jim’s book Hey Ranger! True Tales of Humor and Misadventure from America’s National Parks is available from Trailer Life Directory.com