“Somebody was a punk somewhere,” says the lady stirring grits at the Coward Truck Stop’s breakfast buffet. “Somebody must have been a scaredy-cat.”
No one else in the truck stop knows for sure either (“I never really asked that question.”) Luckily, I find Hope Arroyo at the meat market counter of the nearby Stop-n-Shop. Arroyo, born and raised in Coward, sighs as if she’s been telling this story her entire life.
“A Confederate colonel called Asbury Coward,” she says. “Well, that’s the story they say. We’ve also heard there’s a lot of farmers in the area named Coward.”
“I’m a Coward!” the man in line getting chicken wings says. “My whole family is from here.”
As we all start laughing, Arroyo remembers another funny story.
“This town has a lot of families with the last name Braveboy in it,” she says. “And a boy went off to war and did extraordinary things, and ended up winning awards, but the headline at the time was ‘Braveboy from Coward!’”
No one else in the truck stop knows for sure either (“I never really asked that question.”) Luckily, I find Hope Arroyo at the meat market counter of the nearby Stop-n-Shop. Arroyo, born and raised in Coward, sighs as if she’s been telling this story her entire life.
“A Confederate colonel called Asbury Coward,” she says. “Well, that’s the story they say. We’ve also heard there’s a lot of farmers in the area named Coward.”
“I’m a Coward!” the man in line getting chicken wings says. “My whole family is from here.”
As we all start laughing, Arroyo remembers another funny story.
“This town has a lot of families with the last name Braveboy in it,” she says. “And a boy went off to war and did extraordinary things, and ended up winning awards, but the headline at the time was ‘Braveboy from Coward!’”
