Has anybody looked to see if this house is still standing? I checked Street View (fantastic invention!) but their cameras didn't go down this alley (behind the 2100 block of 14th NW).

And has anybody noticed the thin lines of snow on top of the tree branches? This must have been a sunny Winter's day - making those broken windowpanes the little boy is looking out of all the more troubling. That house he's living in is nicely designed. The owner/builder took money and care with those decorative touches along the roof-line. Seeing buildings like this one excites me to no end.

[Try Live Maps Bird's Eye View. Click below. - Dave]

Hmmm.. yeah. Bought my first car from a Mrs. Cheatham. It didn't seem ironic until the accelerator fell through the floor a week later. My mom and I still laugh about it 20 years later. We never buy anything anymore from anyone named Cheatham. I also worked with a Fonda Dicks (I know you must all think I'm joking, but I'm serious as a heart attack) at a rest home in Ohio. I don't know if it pertained to her occupation as a nurse's aide, but it did seem ironic that any heterosexual woman would be named that.

[Ironic? More like "appropriate." - Dave]

My dentist is Dr. Fang

The Amigone funeral homes in the Buffalo, New York area laid me out when I lived there. Pun intended. Family name.

If may I add another case, the war minister of Ceausescu (Romania), was aptly named Militaru

Is it relining old copper pots and pans with tin?

[Tinning is soldering. As in pipe joints. The company also did "tin roofing, guttering and spouting." Its ads drew a distinction between tinning and sheet metal work. - Dave]

There is a whole theory (Nominative Determinism) built around the idea that people eventually gravitate into professions for which they are name-suited. This was devised by the New Scientist journal:

"WE recently came across a new book, Pole Positions - The Polar Regions and the Future of the Planet, by Daniel Snowman. Then, a couple of weeks later, we received a copy of London Under London - A Subterranean Guide, one of the authors of which is Richard Trench. So it was interesting to see Jen Hunt of the University of Manchester stating in the October issue of The Psychologist: "Authors gravitate to the area of research which fits their surname." Hunt's example is an article on incontinence in the British Journal of Urology (vol 49, pp 173-176, 1977) by J. W. Splatt and D. Weedon.[1] (This really does exist. We've checked it.)"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism

In southern California, I had a dentist named Dr. Toothacher and a physician named Dr. Croak. I kid you not.

One of the oldest plumbing companies in my city (fourth generation now) is the eponymously named "Goforth Plumbing & Drain." And, one of the most-respected doctors here in the 1950s and 1960s, particularly trusted for what were still called "female complaints," maintained a thriving practice despite the name on his shingle: "Albert S. Hackim, Physician & Surgeon."

The orthodontist I went to as a child was Dr. Toothman. And, I used to work with a woman named Mrs. Payne - her son is a dentist.

I love it when people's names fit their jobs, like Mr. Flood the plumber, or Dr. Whitehead the dermatologist, or Larry Sprinkle, the meteorologist.

I had repairs done to my heating system this week but I don't recall the repairmen showing up wearing a tie or bowtie. Must be a union thing.

Cute kid looking out the window at all the excitement.