Bucklebury Bucklers

My hearing is not what it used to be. Thank heavens for TV closed captioning. It saved me from total embarrassment last Friday.

Last Friday was, of course, the Royal Wedding. I was sure that I heard a commentator mention that Kate Middleton's hometown was "Huckleberry". Well, I thought, maybe they grow blueberries there and named the town after the product that out them on the map. After all, we have Oil City right here in Pennsylvania and Steel City just down the road from Bethlehem. There is Plant City in Florida that touts itself as The Strawberry Capital of the World.

I was about to comment on this when I glanced at the closed captioning and saw that Kate actually comes from "Bucklebury". How quaintly British is that? It sounds like something straight out of "The Lord of the Rings". "After their near-disaster at the Prancing Pony in the village of Bree, Aragorn and the hobbits proceeded to Bucklebury where the Nazgul could not find them."

Southeastern Pennsylvania is chock-full of town names transplanted from England. Reading, Chalfont, Hatfield, Horsham, and St Isadore on the Green (Well, maybe not that one) are towns in both the Old and New Worlds. Why is there no Bucklebury here?

Perhaps it is because Bucklebury does not lend itself to a good nickname for its high school athletic teams. The Red Knights take the field for Reading HS and inspire fear in opponents' hearts much like the Chalfont Chargers and the Hatfield Hatters (Well, not so much for that one). But the Bucklebury Bucklers? They would never make a goal line stand. They would buckle.

Why couldn't Kate Middleton be from Liverpool? There's a unique name that I wouldn't misinterpret until I read the closed-captioning. Also, there's an East Liverpool in Ohio so we have the "Hands Across the Water" connection and any old athletic nickname would do because we all know that liver is full of iron.