Ordinary Floyds

DAVID B.GREENBERGER: What do you think of the name Floyd?
JERRY ST. CLAIR: What’s the matter with it? I have a brother named that, if that means anything to you.
DBG: You don’t hear that name so much anymore.
HELEN PETTEYS: You used to hear Biblical names a lot, and you don’t hear them so much now either.
JERRY: There’s a celebrity named Pretty Boy Floyd. He’s a pool shark.
DBG: Oh yeah!
JERRY: You mean I told you somethin’ you didn’t know?!
DBG: You always do. Rita, do you know anyone named Floyd?
RITA BUTLER: A first name or last name?
DBG: Either one.
RITA: Oh, I know some Floyds. I can’t tell you anything spectacular about them, they’re just ordinary people.
DBG: Ordinary Floyds.
RITA: Yeah, ordinary Floyds.
JIM PERRY: Floyd Nolan -- The Hotdog Specialist!
RITA: Floyd Morehouse, he lived up on Prospect Street there.
JERRY: I got one for you, how ‘bout that guy that the famous song was named after, Floyd Collins, “The Death of Floyd Collins.” I could almost tell you all the words to that song. (starts to quietly sing the song to himself, in almost all la-la-las, except for the line, “The Death of Floyd Collins.”)
RITA: I never heard that.
JERRY: That’s an old-timer. I used to square dance to that.
RITA: Well, I square danced, but I don’t know as I square danced to that.
HELEN: How about Floyd Wright?
RITA: Oh, the architect.
JERRY: You know, that Pretty Boy Floyd was the guy that started pool in the barrooms. Billiards they used to call it. It’s still billiards –- it’s billiards to me anyway.

(From a conversation at the Washington County senior citizen mealsite held at St. Paul's Parish House, Greenwich, NY, in the mid-1990s.)