Grants Pass
Question arose recently as to whether Grants as in Grants Pass in southern Oregon is possessive or plural: actually it's not Grants Pass, it's Grunts Pass, plural, because of what happened, not recorded in textbooks, when in the mid 1900's two guys decided to leave the flats south of the pass and had such a hard time climbing the slope, especially since one of them faked a sore foot and demanded to be carried, and the other wised up and faked a sore back so that they had to share the carrying, one after the other, and since they had no food left halfway up because they thought the trip would not be so long and tedious, since they were told by friends and the media that there was a wealth of supplies at the first of a whole chain of early-day 6-11's, a chain which ultimately failed after a disastrous try at 5-11's, beginning years ago with a whole series of similar failures precipitating further attempts at the business beginning with 1-11's, and yet another try was made, upgrading the name to what it is today, and everyone is still waiting to see what that outcome will be, this new chain starting at the summit, so that the guys had no worries whatsoever, and were surprised that they were growing weaker and weaker which condition further necessitated the every-other carrying procedure and even lost the strength to talk coherently, that they ended up just grunting, thereby causing the pass, of which they ultimately reached the summit, by which time the clerks at the 6-11 found them and brought them back to only a limited degree of health which reduced them to a permanent state of only being able to grunt incoherently, to be named Grunts Pass in their honor, which stands yet today, although not officially due to a misspelling by a postal worker to Grants Pass, similar to one made by another postal worker who had inadvertently changed Paulsbo to Poulsbo, since that time irrevocably the official name of this western Washington jewel of a town where both of the guys came from, although a year and a half apart, a town, despite its beauty reminiscent of a picture out of National Geographic, has failed to give them due credit for their adventure because it was put off by their annoying habit of grunting instead of simply explaining what had happened to them at the Pass.
©2004 Robert Balcomb