Idealia 'remodeled'

UPDATE 7:58 pm PT: This is the 10th and final revision of this post today.  I went through a lot of names and even added and threw out entire states (sorry, Delaware and Maryland) to make sure I got it exactly right.  Whew!

UPDATE 9/15/2012: Net gain of one name and loss of another border state.  This should be the final list.  Double whew!

UPDATE 10/30/2012: Added 11 more last names and eliminated geographic origins.  I did so after sketching the place on a mythical map and filling it in.

UPDATE 12/2/2012: Finally removed the "Bellflower" name redundancy and added Bankhead and Wimberly for an even 68.

UPDATE 12/7/2012: Lightfoot is in, Littlebridge is out.


Last week, I reviewed The Buddy Wayne Chronicles five years after I wrote it.  I shared what I wished I could keep and I could throw away.  One of my mistakes was my description of Idealia, the portion of heaven in which Buddy Wayne Barefoot and his family live.

In the original book, I divided Idealia into four main residential areas.  They were Little Ireland, West Country, The Bottom, and Hill Country.  Barefoot and his family lived in Hill Country.  There was also a central marketplace area.

There are two main problems with it:

• As I wrote on Friday, the thing looks suspiciously like a theme park, and does not have the reverence of an eternal place of rest and reward, as this is.
• The areas were built with the pretense of being a studio set for a television series, My Ideal World.  I should have realized that the implication of this was a tool for ministry to be used by someone who had died (similar to 90 Minutes in Heaven by Don Piper).  The real circumstances were to be much different: Barefoot and his family and friends were supposed to participate in the Rapture and the Great Tribulation, as described in the book of Revelation that ends the Bible, with Idealia opened up to them during the Millennium, the intervening period that many Christians believe will occur after the battle at Armageddon.  For the life of me, I don't know why I didn't think that on that day in 2007 that I wrote and published it.  Maybe it was my inability to express the gravity of the situation to a public audience.  Maybe it was my rush to get it published at the height of my hatred of NASCAR and my desire to get B.W. out of racing as quickly as possible.  (Strangely, I haven't stopped watching NASCAR in the years since; in fact, I watch every Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series race, and I watch most Camping World Truck Series races.)

So what would Idealia really look like?  It is a oblong-shaped "island" with a geography similar to the Southern United States.  Residents would be descended from these Southern families.  There are 68 in all; their family homesteads cover 8,525 acres and the total population is a little over 900.

The list below is presented counterclockwise, from northeast to southwest and back again.

• LIGHTFOOT
• BLOW
• BULL
• BASS
• McCLAMMY
• SMALLS
• BIRDSONG
• PEACOCK
• SPIKES
• BELLFLOWER
• WIMBERLY
• SNOWBALL
• HOGG
• PLUMPKIN
• SMELLEY
• BUCKLES
• McBRAIN
• BOB
• BRISTER
• BLACKSHIRE
• BOOTY
• POTTERFIELD
• FLIPPER
• RAPP
• RABBITT
• BODKIN
• BLIZZARD
• BUTT
• BOBBITT
• BARBOUR
• BELCHER
• POPPLEWELL
• SIDEBOTTOM
• BOWLING
• SPEARS
• BARNHILL
• SPARKS
• BIBB
• BUGG
• DINGLEBERRY
• McBUNCH
• BEANBLOSSOM
• BALDRIDGE
• TURNIPSEED
• HOOTER
• BLANKS
• BOBO
• BANKHEAD
• LAUGHINGHOUSE
• LOONEY
• ROCKETT
• PEPPERS
• BEAVERS
• BLITCHINGTON
• BROOKSHIRE
• McPATTER
• McLAMB
• BAREFOOT
• BUFFALOE
• BRICKHOUSE
• TIMBERLAKE
• BELK
• LEAK
• BATTLE
• CRABTREE
• BOOZER
• BOATWRIGHT
• BRAYBOY

As you can tell, many of the surnames are vocabulary words or phrases.  For some reason, residents with this type of name settled in bigger numbers in the South than in any other part of the U.S.