What Cheer

 What Cheer

When driving through rural Iowa on Interstate 80 years ago, we would pass an exit for a town with an unusual name, What Cheer. Maybe it was the tedium of the drive, the catchiness of the name, or both, that led us once to get off the highway and go in search of this sunny-sounding place. About twenty or so miles down the country road, we rolled into a tiny town - the sign indicated 600-some people - and came upon a coffee shop. As we had many miles to go that day, and perhaps could satisfy our curiosity about the town’s name there, we stopped. The waitress obliged us with both. While pouring the coffee, she told us with a twinkle in her eye, the story of the naming of What Cheer, no doubt one of local lore. It went something like this...

When the town was founded by a bunch of Scottish coal miners, they had a meeting to come up with a name. The discussion went on for a long time with people being quite intractable in their views. Finally the leader had enough, and said, “The next word heard in this room will be the name!” Before anyone could speak, Ol’ Clem, an imposing figure, opened the door with a bang, and hobbled in. Someone whispered to him, “Clem, take a chair.” Clem looked around for a chair, and, not eyeing one,  with a booming voice, exclaimed, “What cheer!” So, said the waitress with a laugh, “Ol’ Clem named the town.”

Another version of the town’s naming was discovered years later on Wikipedia. “What cheer” is an old greeting from the British Isles. With immigrant Scots making up most of the population in the town’s coal-mining days of the late 1800’s, they might have brought the name with them. One might even have exclaimed, “A new coal vein. What cheer!” Whatever the origin, the waitress’s delightful version - washed down with coffee - sent us on our way, smiling.