What is a Maude Specklebelly?

What is a Maude Specklebelly?

The most common question we get is, “where did your name come from” … followed in close second by “Are you Maude?” To which I always reply- thank goodness my mom wasn’t that mean to me! (no offense of course to any of you Maudes out there— I’m just really not cool enough to shoulder a name like Maude!)

So what is a Maude Specklebelly you may wonder?  Well lets back up to when we were in the thick of every single detail of opening our sweet little store.  So many things came easily to us- our vision, the look of the store, the feel, the goods but the one thing that wasn’t quite right was the name.  Now mind you, we had options- pages and pages of options that would have been just fine.  How would Crooked Pine Boutique or Maple City Mercantile sound?  Not bad, and the list went on and on but nothing was exactly what we were looking for.  We hadn’t found that one perfect thing that sounded cool but more importantly— that meant something. 

One morning I woke to an email from my father that was sent at 3 a.m. now this is out of character for a couple reasons— it’s 3 a.m. and my older (sorry dad) should be sleeping at 3 a.m. and what’s more odd, why was he sending me an email that he would have had to get up and go to the computer to send (no iphones here, revert back to the “older” statement from above- hey we can’t change the facts!) Anyway, all the email said was

“Maude Speckleberry”

Ummmmm…. I turned to my husband with alarm- something is wrong with my dad, we need to go check on him! After reading, Maude Speckleberry to my husband, he shrugged and said, well a Specklebelly is a type of goose. Wow babe, thanks- so helpful (insert eyeroll and loud exhale here!)  So off I went to make sure this Maude Speckleberry character wasn’t someone that would soon be named in a police report.

Thankfully, it turns out all was well and it was just a dream.  You see, my mother had passed away the year before and if you didn’t know her, well she was always silly, laughing and joking around with everyone she knew.  For years and years my mom had sent one of the neighbors a birthday card and she would sign it, “Maude Speckleberry”.  She was just being silly and she was sure it brought that older gentleman joy each year to open his mailbox.  We don’t know why it came to my dad that night but around here, we like to think of it as my mom having a little say in a very special piece of Maude’s! 

Oh— you might be wondering why our name is Maude Specklebelly’s and not Speckleberry’s…. well my husband (the avid hunter) really thought a goose would make a cool logo— we tend to agree!  The funny thing is we get called Maude Speckleberry’s quite often, coincidence?  Maybe so?