My friends' mother died last week, and the service wasn't supposed to start until 10 in the morning, down in Deadwood. I was up early, planning on hitting the farmers market before the sun got high, and thought I'd go back out to DeBerry, across the Sabine River, to see the house where we used to live and DeBerry Baptist Church, where Daddy used to preach. From there, I figured I'd slip down through Yates and Guill country to the Midyett Community. All of those places are in Panola County. Panola means cotton in Chickasaw language. As a young pastor, my dad started a brush arbor church at Midyett in the late 1940s and the building that replaced it remains, though it's been fixed up some over the years. The old spring out by the county road stays covered these days, but there's still a canopy over it, and the water's clear, and it's a nice place to stop to admire a sunrise and reminisce on the way to a funeral. I was standing there beside the spring, looking back up at the church 200 yards off the road, when I noticed the church sign, the official one where they tell when the services are and such things. At the bottom, it said: Pastor Wayne 'T-Bone' Fontenot. And I had to laugh. That's so East Texas, so perfect. Where else but East Texas? I guarantee you wouldn't see a church sign around Austin that reads: Pastor Phil 'The Undertaker' Sanders. And it got me to thinking about nicknames. See, I've been running from my own nickname for 60-plus years. That would be 'Butch' to those of you who haven't heard. My grandfather did that to me when I was only a few days old, and I've always hated it, even though much of my family and lots of Panola County folks still call me that. Pretty much the whole funeralizing bunch last week called me Butch. But Butch is such a plain and unimaginative nickname. Compared to some of the people I knew and the names that got laid on them, Butch is downright mundane. See, nicknaming, in its purest and most inspired form, is a true art. And in East Texas, choosing nicknames transcends reason and reality. We don't have the 'Fat Tony' and 'Jimmy Hooks' and 'Joey Bananas' kinds of names they have back east. We have names that are colorful, bright and descriptive -- monikers that mean something to people who live in Texas. And I'm not talking about the Jim Bob stuff that comedians joke about. I don't even count Bubba as a nickname, and I knew two different Busters in Carthage alone. People named Sonny are a dime a dozen. No, people in Texas get named for their habits (Booger), their looks (Possum), their walk (Sugarfoot), their hair color (Red) or their lack of hair (Slick). They're named for animals (Snake, Bull and Crow). They're named for their size (Biggon, Bull, Tiny and Heavy). They're named for cartoon characters (Snuffy and Bugs) and TV characters (Opie and Barney). A few are named for heavy equipment, like Jeep, Jet and Mack. And some are just named because it fits with their last name ('Tater' Baker). One of my favorites was 'Pig' Rich. He was a county commissioner, who lived right down the road from Midyett, and I drove past his house Thursday morning. My grandfather knew Pig and his wife, and we often stopped there for coffee on our way down into the thickets to fish. 'Britches' O'Brien, Bull's older brother, got his name because his baseball pants fell down once as he was preparing to bat. 'Boo Hoo' Hillen was a roller skater, who later decided he didn't like Boo Hoo. He changed it to Blackie. Boopie and Cootie were brothers, which I always sing to the tune of 'Frankie and Johnny'. Their names were Clifford and Marlon, but we went through school calling them Boopie and Cootie. Don't know why. I'm also not sure why women seem to be immune to nicknames. Sure, some of them get names, usually by another girl in their gym class who's decided to hound them into depression. But those colorful Texas nicknames seem to be pretty much within the male realm. Like 'Train,' real name Herman, who could make a sound like a train whistle. Or 'Dooden Dooden' who was a bootlegger. Now that's a nickname. Mike Leggett writes for the Austin American-Statesman. E-mail: mleggett@statesman.com. 