'Round and 'round he goes, and where he stops nobody knows

A few years back a woman named Mary Humphrey who raises goats in Ohio left a few comments on my other blog, the one that is a Rolls-Royce. When she happened to mention the breeds of her goats, I said they sounded like a law firm. In the following list, can you spot the breeds of goats and also the one real law firm?

1. Harpswell, Hemswell, Blyborough & Willoughton

2. Saanans, Alpines, Nubians & Boers

3. Rosencrantz & Guildenstern

4. Gobel, Lipitas, Shackelford & Ogletree

5. Herrera, Rosenblum, Petrovsky & Mock

6. Merrill, Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Beane

7. Lamborghini, Ferrari, Dusenberg & Tesla

8. Bentley, Bentley & Bentley

9. Christ, Marx, Wood, & Wei


Stumped?

Number 8 is the law firm. It's in Marietta, Georgia. A fourth Bentley joined the firm in 2014. He has not yet been made a partner, so they have resisted changing the name to Bentley, Bentley, Bentley & Bentley. For many years an actual Bentley automobile sat in front of their building as the only indication of what might be inside.

Number 2 are the goat breeds.

Number 1 are villages in England that Yorkshire Pudding mentioned in his blog recently. If you don't know who Number 3 are, well, shame on you. Number 4 are just some random names I threw together. Gobel reminded me of both George Gobel, an American comedian, and Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler's buddy. Ogletree's used to be a grocery store near my home in Cobb County, Georgia. Number 5 are former managers of mine at IBM, two in Boca Raton, Florida, and two in Atlanta, Georgia. Merrill, Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Beane (Number 6) was an early name of Merrill Lynch, an American stock trading company that eventually became the wealth management division of the Bank of America. Lamborghini etc. (Number 7) are luxury automobiles, unlike Bentley, Bentley & Bentley (Number 8), which is, as you know, a law firm. This brings us to Number 9: Christ, Marx, Wood & Wei.

In 1970, Ira Levin, who had written Rosemary's Baby earlier and would later write The Boys From Brazil and The Stepford Wives, wrote This Perfect Day, a dystopian novel of the future. It opens with a children's playground rhyme that mystified me when I first read it but by the time I finished reading the book it became perfectly understandable. Reviewer Jo Walton called This Perfect Day "unputdownable" and I agree. Forty-five years later I can still recite from memory the children's playground rhyme:

Christ, Marx, Wood and Wei
Led us to this perfect day.
Marx, Wood, Wei and Christ
All but Wei were sacrified.
Wood, Wei, Christ and Marx
Gave us lovely schools and parks.
Wei, Christ, Marx and Wood
Made us humble, made us good.

Lest you think I am prone to flitting from subject to subject, I will close now.

Better to keep one's mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

Talk about closing the barn door after the horse is gone.




P.S. -- This is definitely not George Gobel.

P.P.S. -- I still think Saanans, Alpines, Nubians & Boers sounds like a law firm.