U of Y

Across the border from Alaska is Yukon.

Practically across the street from where I grew up is UConn.

Crazy, right? No? Whatever.

UConn's mascot, of course, is the Husky. To be more specific, it's Jonathan the Husky. How that name came about? Well, there are some tales too convoluted and disputed to get into here.

This isn't one of them.

The first governor of Connecticut was Jonathan Trumbull. So they named a town after his last name (home of the 19-whatever Little League World Series champions), and they named a dog after his first name.

But why the Husky as the mascot instead of, well, the UConn Cows or the Connecticut Foliage, or as Cheers once joked, The UConn Insurance Salesmen?

Well, there are some tales too convoluted and disputed to get into here.

This may or may not be one of them.

Up here, in the Yukon Territory, there apparently are a lot of Huskies. I even saw one. Isn't that special? And "Yukon" sounds kind of like "UConn" -- in fact, it sounds exactly the same. So because there are Huskies up here, there could be Huskies at UConn, too. Capiche? 

In fact, my old buddy Joanne had a Husky dog. She's from Ashford. Joanne, not the dog. The dog might have been from Ashford -- I don't remember. Some snobby folk from Storrs used to make fun of Ashford, but some of my best friends are from there (as was my awesome cat), so it's probably OK. Of course, I also was arrested there, so, you know, there's that.

Back on the plus side, I hit for the cycle in the title game of a little league All-Star tournament there when I was 11 or 12. It went HR, 3B, BB (for good measure), 1B, 2B. All in my second game back from a broken arm. Have I blogged about this before? Maybe. Hey, it was my greatest athletic accomplishment, so I'm going to milk it.

Anyway, Yukon to UConn. The Connecticut folk were being funny by going with Huskies -- if that's even the actual reason for it. Which it isn't. Necessarily. The Husky was chosen by a student vote back in the '30s-ish -- so the students might have been being clever/funny, or maybe they just like happy dogs. The whole thing is even funnier in that UConn had a Samoyed as the mascot for so long before shifting to an actual Husky a few years back. 

And those t-shirts and banners that say "This is UConn territory" -- well, yeah, same funny/clever. Go Whalers!

The point? Right -- we crossed from Alaska to Yukon. There's not a lot going on here (even Storrs now has a downtown!), but some nice scenery. 

Y - U - K - O - N, YUKON, YUKON, YUKON!