I suppose it's also possibile that the surname "Mills" might not be entirely uncommon in Arkansas, a state which is also known to produce a respectable number of people named "Wilbur". I've spelunked through enough dark, narrow, and twisted logic "caves" in search of where some of our favorite brands came from to know how easy it is find yourself following an important branch of the Overholt family all the way into Oregon where they all become car dealers.
If you want to waste a few hours and get a good laugh or two, sit down at your computer sometime, with a bottle of good bourbon or rye whiskey of course, and just type your name into Google (or Yahoo!, Mamma, Ask Jeeves, or any other search engine) and see how many of you there are out there. All waiting to be jumbled together and confused with one another.
For example...
Michael Veach, hopefully not our Kentucky Gentleman and Scholar, is currently serving time in a Wisconsin prison.
That's when he isn't serving as pastor of a Staten Island, NY church.
Or as a trustee on the Westfield Township (Illinois) Board. That's right there in Clark County, Chuck!
Which reminds me... Charles Cowdery shows up in several places, including as a contributing author to the JSTOR database we discussed earlier. Chuck must have forgotten about "his" fine commentary on nine statues sculpted by Ed Hamilton in the late '70s.
Several of us appear to be doctors. Googlers prone to brand confusion will discover that John Lipman is a rather well-known diagnostic radiology and vascular & interventional radiology physician in Atlanta, Georgia. Also in Kennesaw and Marietta. Perhaps Mike in Conyers knows me. I do uterine fibroids like nobody's business, baby.
I'm also the Executive Director of the Cape Cod Environmental Planning Commission in Massachusetts. Hey MikeK! Drop by our office sometime. Tell 'em I sent ya!
For those of you who might find yourself in need of enterprise-grade identity-validation technologies, you can find me in Washington. Kirkland, Washington, not D.C., where I am the Investor Relations rep for SAFlink Corporation. Perhaps someone should run the name "Wilbur Mills" through the SAFlink product?
Oh, and don't forget theapesheet.com (no that's NOT me, either; but I do like it)
And, right here in River City (aka, Cincinnati), I've discovered that John Lipman was a founding member of the top-40 pop band "98-Degrees". The internet references to John Lipman and 98-Degrees once resulted in a touching e-mail from a starry-eyed young fan who wanted to let me know she was devasted when I left the band and I was always her favorite. I wrote her a nice message thanking her for her kind thoughts and explaining that I'm likely older than THAT John Lipman's father, and probably old enough to be her grandfather. She never replied.
But I digress. Getting back to the task of showing how some perfectly innocent (or at least unaware) slob named Will Mills, who may (or may not) have ever set foot in Arkansas, MIGHT have been credited with federal legislation beneficial to that state's lumber industry (as well as to the quality of America's straight whiskey), let's take a look at how easily one of US could have done the same thing....
Continuing our stroll around the palatial estate of Google, let's see what we can find about folks named, say, Joe "Bucc58" Young...
Even without the Mighty Monkey thing, Joe's name gets around the 'net a bit, too. As a well-known rodeo rider and cowboy poet in Caldwell, Idaho, Joe has won numerous awards and has been invited to recite at no less than five of the prestigeous annual National Cowboy Poetry Gatherings. Really cool, Joe! I've read some of your work, even before I knew it was you.
Of course, I guess they do have a bit of lumber in Idaho.
Vancouver, too, I would imagine.
Vancouver, did I say? Well, it's as good an example as any of the long and twisty (not to mention, often hilariously wrong) road one can encounter through the simple device of a good imagination, an ability to read between a single line, and Google. Let's follow the "sawdust trail" and see just how many ways we can "trace" our friend relationship to legislation requiring the use of new oak barrels to make bourbon.
In addition to Idaho, Joe Young shows up in Gary G's back yard. In the town of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Joe Young once held the second KFC franchise in all of Canada. That's KFC as in KENTUCKY Fried Chicken. Y'all. He was also a well-known writer and political activist in Toronto, and Canada's Communist League nominee in several Ontario campaigns in the late '90s and in British Columbia during the early part of this decade. That's the Vancouver part. Joe didn't win the election there. Probably that was a good thing. Politicians are renowned for their ability to say convincing words out of both sides of their mouths at once, and Joe Young must certainly have been talented at this, because while campaigning in Vancouver he appears to have been simultaneously running for United States House of Representatives as the 2000 candidate for the South Carolina Libertarian party!
Anyone who can manage to attract campaign contributions as both a Communist and a Libertarian simply HAS to have some background in bourbon marketing!
Joe Young may have even a greater interest in lumber and how it applies to the bourbon industry than we realize. At least that might easily be true of the Joe Young who is President and CEO of South Carolina's Low Country Forest Products, a past chairman of the South Carolina Timber Producers Association, and a member on the National Sustainable Forestry Board. He also happens to have served as South Carolina's state legislator (Democrat, not Libertarian, and hardly Communist, no matter what my redneck friends say), where he would certainly have represented the state's lumber-producers, and for all I know, he may have been instrumental in selling South Carolina oak to such outfits as Bluegrass Cooperage and Independent Stave.
Oh, and all the time he was doing that, Joe apparently swung a pretty mean guitar for ANTiSEEN, the legendary '90s South Carolina underground punk-metal band. ANTiSEEN had been around for over twenty years, and Joe Young has played combined lead and rhythm guitar for all of them. All right, maybe "played" isn't the exactly correct word here, but he's the one responsible for those sounds that come out of it. And whiskey (Bourbon and Tennessee) is definitely a major part of both their repertoire and their stage preparation.
Sure seems to me like it all fits together.
I apologize to Wilbur Mills (D-Arkansas) for calling him a Senator.
I apologize to Wilbur Mills (local politician) for mistaking him for a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
I apologize to Wilbur Mills (lumber man) for thinking some lousy kid, who's gonna grow up to be a politician, actually accomplished something as noble and important to Arkansas and to American whiskey as you did, and no one noticed.
And, by the way Will (lumber man), you're okay. And your new dress looks nice.