Reader Report on Mortuaries: Never a Wake

In listing some of the cute business names collected by Helen W. Rogaway on a recent motor trip, I noted that there were no dentists or funeral parlors on the list, and suggested that they might be immune to the cute craze.

But almost nothing is absolutely so. (Notice I said almost nothing.) Robert and Betty Mehnert send me a clipping from a Buffalo phone book advertising Amigone Funeral Homes. One might suspect that Amigone is a macabre play on “Am I gone?” However, it turns out, innocently, to be the name of the proprietor, Anthony Amigone.

That’s the closest thing to a cute funeral parlor name as I have found, but the Rev. Edward P. Allen, rector of St. Andrew & St. Charles Episcopal Church, Granada Hills, wistfully offers one he thought up.

“During a stay at Mammoth a few years back,” he recalls, “I noticed how that growing community was developing the basic services for a skiing population: condos, banks, restaurants, garages, sporting goods stores, and an amazing number of orthopedic medical facilities. However, there was still no hospital to bring newcomers into the world, nor a funeral parlor to usher people out. With my ministerial skills honed in formalizing the hatching, matching, and dispatching of human lives, I fantasized opening an undertaking emporium and calling it ‘Apres-Ski.’ “

Both Bob Gipple of Apple Valley and Barbara J. Huddleston of Hesperia have sent me an ad from the Yellow Pages for a dental center in Hesperia called “The Filling Station.”

Two witnesses, Jodi Rogaway of La Crescenta (Helen Rogaway’s daughter) and Doris Larson of Arroyo Grande, report seeing a dental office on San Juan Island (a ferry ride from Seattle) named The Tooth Ferry.

Mrs. Rogaway adds: “The pun mania rubbed off on me--my diet and fitness business is registered with the Small Business Administration as ‘New-trition.’ ”

I said I doubted that you would be likely to see a bail bonds house named Bail Bonds R Us. But bail bondsmen aren’t above a little fun. Barbara Watson of Pacoima writes that she used to advertise her bail bond business with a personalized license plate that read “Bail 4 U.”

Willard Olney of Hesperia sends a snapshot of a trailer parked along the freeway a bit south of Devore. It advertises: “Faul’s Bail Bonds: I’ll Get You Out If It Takes 20 Years.”

Pat Cooper of Downey writes that Downey has a bail bond house with the name and slogan “Deep Water Bail Bonds: Don’t Go to Bed with a Price on Your Head.”

Sarah Aiken of Laguna Niguel reports that on South Coast Highway in Laguna Beach there is a woman’s lingerie shop called “I C London.” Like Mrs. Aiken I didn’t get the point at first.

She says: “I drove past it for years without thinking anything about it, and then my smart husband reminded me of the little rhyme we used to chant as children when we wanted to taunt someone:

“I see London

“I see France

“I see Mary’s underpants. (Insert the name of whatever child you’re pestering.)”

Barbara B. Moe of Santa Ana nominates as the ultimate in cuteness a plant shop in the Tustin area called “Holly, Wood & Vine.”

Margaret Lundstrom of Arcadia reports that an athletic shoe store in the Santa Anita Mall used to be called Athlete’s Foot, but it lasted only about a year. “I learned they’d changed the name because it was negatively affecting their business.”

Alexander Weir Jr. of Playa del Rey recalls a bar in Chicago called the Hotsy Totsy Yacht Club. “They do not have a burgee or members. It was previously called the Hotsy Totsy Yacht Club and Bait Shop and was (allegedly) a pick-up joint.”

Gordon Glattenberg of Santa Clarita recalls photographing a liquor store in Cheyenne, Wyo., named “DT’s.” “The building was decorated with pink elephants.”

Leland C. Thoburn of Tujunga remembers an antique store near Sunset and Vermont named “Den of Antiquity.” William Barnett Spivak reports spotting a poultry shop in Boyle Heights named “Elmer Dickens’ Eggs & Chickens.”

Patti Garrity thinks the Bank of America should open a branch on the Seine called Right Bank of Paris.

I think I’ve got a great name for a book shop specializing in philosophy and myth: “Jack Smith’s Myth and Pith.”