Carnett: What’s in a name? Years of devotion. Bring back the Hitching Post

Poor Mrs. Hardy.

I fear that were she currently dwelling on the table-land above the pristine bay, she’d have a conniption. I saw her pitch a few.

Mrs. Hardy — Nina Hardy — was my journalism instructor my junior year at Costa Mesa High School, in 1960-61. And she was good. She was also advisor to the student newspaper, the Hitching Post.

I was a member of Mesa High’s first graduating class, in 1962.

Mrs. Hardy was a no-nonsense veteran of the professional newsroom. We cub reporters couldn’t pull the wool over her eyes even if we tried, and we didn’t try because we were too intimidated.

I spent the entire year trying to figure out how to cram the five W’s and an H (who, what, when, where, why and sometimes how) into every lead I wrote.

I was a wreck by June.

I was the Hitching Post’s sports editor that year. In fact, I’d been sports editor the year before (1959-60) when it was a mimeographed biweekly managed by an English teacher. But for my junior year, The Powers That Be hired Mrs. Hardy — an honest-to-goodness ink-stained wretch who ran the newsroom like Lou Grant.

We became a letterpress publication, printed on real newsprint at the Newport Harbor News-Press.

CMHS had a campus theme going. We were the Mustangs. Now, I must admit that I was none too bright as a freshman. I didn’t know that a mustang was a horse. I kid you not. I thought it was a P-51 fighter airplane. How cool to have the best fighter plane of World War II as our mascot.

Somebody, I don’t recall who, disabused me of that notion. A mustang is a wild North American horse. I liked my fighter plane idea better.

In keeping with our horsy theme, many things on campus were given a Western flavor. Marty Mustang was our mascot. Our varsity teams were the Mustangs. Our lower teams were the Ponies, Colts and Broncos. The yearbook was the Roundup. The newspaper was the Hitching Post. (Get it?)

And the Comet Kohoutek wouldn’t be around to scramble things up for another decade.

Now, 53 years since my graduation, I’ve discovered that the universe is unmitigated chaos.

The Hitching Post — my Hitching Post! — is no more. What? It’s been subsumed into something called the Equestrian. How and where do we tie up our horses? Mrs. Hardy would be apoplectic. My column, “Speaking of Sports,” has turned over in its grave.

Apparently the name was changed a couple of years back.

“Equestrian conjures up the image of a snooty, monocled Englishman in knee boots and jodhpurs,” Kent Paul told me recently. Paul is a Costa Mesa High graduate who retired this fall after 25 years of teaching there. He continues to coach football.

“The decision to make this change was done unilaterally, by one teacher.”

Paul told me that students thought the old name projected a “negative image.”

“It’s my contention that good writing makes a good newspaper, not a name,” Paul told me. I know a couple of editors who’d subscribe to that.

“I mean, really, could a football coach unilaterally change our name from Mustangs to Patriots, Packers or Seahawks just because he feels his athletes would perform better?”

Certainly not, though the jodhpurs might be a nice touch.

So Paul has stepped to the plate for all us broken down Mustangs to plead our case. He’s let The Powers That Be know that traditionalists are not pleased.

“I first made the point a year and a half ago, but so far nothing has happened,” he said. “I’ve learned, working in a school district, that the best way to let something die is to ignore it until everyone forgets about it.”

Or until old football coaches are put out to pasture.

“I’ve talked to our last two principals,” Paul said. “They seem sympathetic, but nothing has been done. I don’t want it to die.”

That’s the Mustang Spirit!

Wake up the echoes, Paul, and send the volley cheer. Let’s not give up on our Hitching Post!

Mrs. Hardy would be proud.

JIM CARNETT, who lives in Costa Mesa, worked for Orange Coast College for 37 years.