Tales of the Incredible Hoke Robertson

The year was 1963 and I had just completed my doctoral thesis in Etymology. The four years spent at Cambridge studying languages had given me a very a unique perspective on words and how they developed over time. On returning to Lodi, I began working as a plant manager for the old Lodi Hocksey family. Everybody here in Lodi is well familiar with the Hocksey saga; of how Grampa Puck had developed the first organized hockey league in California after the severe winter of 1903; how his daughter Roxie showed the family moxie and became the first women elected to the California Senate in 1918; how the bare-footed uncle Lacquer “No-Socksie” had planted the first Tokay vines in the area and stomped the very first harvest by himself to get the grape juice out, and how second cousin Farragut “Docksey” had created a shipping empire from hanging around Pier 12 in San Francisco.

Anyway, I began work at the giant Hocksey Winery which used to be next to the Beckman family estate on Armstrong Road. While running this vast operation, I got to know the heir to the Hocksey fortune, Solomon Hocksey, who unfortunately suffered from dyslexia; a virtually unknown and undiagnosed condition at the time. Poor old Solomon Hocksey, success did not attend him. Try as he might, and even though quite intelligent, the words rarely came out correctly. Whatever his actual thoughts were, the statements he made amazed and surprised nearly everyone. Once while paying cards, and in a moment of success he declared to the foiled opponent, “well, the cheese is in the other nostril now!” which of course defied interpretation. He was best known for saying things that not only did not make sense, but were internally inconsistent. For example, he would regularly make such nonsensical comments as “that is the hottest cold air I’ve ever felt” or “that is the healthiest dead tree I’ve ever seen” or “Woodbridge is a wonderful place.”

Anyway, after once stating that “my cow was the best horse I ever had” some of the more uncaring workers began disparaging poor Solomon as a moron. Of course he was not; he once calculated the distance from the earth to the moon using only a mayonnaise jar, a ping pong ball and a compass. However the moniker stuck and soon any misstatement resulted in the guilty party being labeled a “Hocksey Moron.” While consulting with the Encyclopedia Britannica and Webster’s Dictionary, I eventually coined the phrase “Oxymoron” to describe an internally inconsistent phrase, and at some level, protect my old friend Solomon.

How Solomon and I first developed wine coolers is for another day. HOKE ROBERTSON