I discovered a quirky, humorous website, Entering City of Nero. It’s done by Bob Cudmore, of The Bob Cudmore Radio Show of Amsterdam, NY. In the spirit of Prairie Home Companion, Cudmore has a million little tales about a little town on Upstate New York, Nero. It’s all imaginary and quite funny.
No one in Nero believes that anything good will ever happen again. Today, a declining upstate New York mill town, even Nero’s beginnings were not auspicious. When the community was founded by British textile interests in the 19th century, the good classical names - Utica, Attica, Troy, Syracuse - had already been claimed by other upstate cities.
Some people thought the name Nero had a good, ancient ring to it, and noted that Nero rhymes with “hero.” Nero also rhymes with “zero”and “Zero Nero” has become a common taunt aimed at the Nero High School basketball team when the Fiddlers run onto the court.
Nobody researched history when Nero was named and the connection with the infamous emperor Nero, who fiddled while Rome burned, wasn’t discovered until the city’s tenth anniversary.
By then, the word Nero was lettered on the signs into town and had been carved in stone on a few public buildings. Residents decided to keep the name.
Sock-making was Nero’s principal industry and, for many years, Nero was known as Sock City and “the sock-making capital of the world.” In the 1960s, the sock mills abandoned Nero for cheaper labor down south and, ultimately, offshore. Nero has never recovered.
It’s been said that humor is humorous because there’s always a little truth mixed in. This proves true here, with Nero’s woes! You can delve into more stories about Nero, NY, here. Prepare to chortle.
Hat tip NYCO.
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