[Magdalen] Speaking of unfortunate names

[Jay Weigel]

And speaking of high schools with weird names, there is, or was, a rural
high school "up nort" somewhere in Wisconsin called Ondossagon. There isn't
a town by that name, so I'm not quite sure where it is. One year back
before they divided the state high school basketball tournament into
classes by size, the "cinderella" team happened to be the one from
Ondossagon, leading one of the sportswriters in Madison to quip, "Just what
kind of geometric figure is an ondossagon?"

On Wed, Jun 1, 2016 at 11:34 AM, Cantor03--- via Magdalen <
magdalen at herberthouse.org> wrote:

>
>
> In a message dated 6/1/2016 10:45:32 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
> jay.weigel at gmail.com writes:
>
> Brud's  mention of Rush City reminded me of the high school near where a
> friend  used to live. It used to be the consolidated high school of
> Galesville and  Ettrick, Wisconsin, and was known as Gale-Ettrick. It was
> around when I was  in high school, even. Sometime in the 1970s it swallowed
> up the high school  in nearby Trempealeau and became
> Galesville-Ettrick-Trempealeau, or, Lord  forgive us all,
> Gale-Ettrick-Tremplo. It was abbreviated and known by  students far and
> wide
> as G.E.T.  High.>>>>>>>>
>
> Trempealeau County is named for the cone shaped "mountain," part
> of the Mississippi bluff region in the so called "Driftless Area," an  area
> never glaciated and therefore characteristically rugged for the Upper
> Midwest.  The French stands for "mountain steeped in water."
>
> The County is just south of Eau Claire, and when we traveled down
> Wis 93, we were always trying to spot the terminal moraine of
> the last glaciation about 15,000 years ago.
>
> My maternal side family is in this region, centered on Eleva, but
> also in Independence and Blair (where I get my lefse).  My  namesake
> and godchild, David Pedersen and family have a home on one of the
> sharp bluffs near Eleva with a view that could as well be in the
> Appalachians.  The difference is that this is rich farm country,  and
> the valleys are heavily farmed.  Another of my cousins is one of  a
> group of four farmers that shepherd as many as 800 Holsteins.
>
>
> David Strang.
>
>
>