You can see the signs around Dade City. They proudly proclaim this little town north of Tampa as the home of tennis great Jim Courier.
In unincorporated Pasco County, there's a road named for the Bellamy Brothers. To be absolutely alliterative, it's grandly called a boulevard.
But if you look around Zephyrhills, you get no clue that this is the hometown of Ryan Pickett, defensive tackle for the St. Louis Rams. The only recognition he received from his neighbors a couple years back was a proclamation from the City Council. Otherwise, no street sign, no banner, nothing.
The way we honor sports celebrities and music stars speaks loudly about what, and whom, we value in our popular culture.
So it's not surprising: The difference between Pickett and the others is not limited to what made them famous. Unlike Courier and the Bellamy Brothers, Pickett is black.
I'd suggest that Zephyrhills do something to right this problem, but I'm not sure many people in Zephyrhills would think Pickett's treatment is a problem. Anyway, people here have as much on their plate as they can handle: a tense battle over naming a street for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
It started innocuously last fall. A black woman with a long record for civic activism successfully asked the City Council to change the name of Sixth Avenue. It's a residential street that runs from the largely black neighborhood, once called the Quarters, to the other, white side of town. Almost immediately, whites objected.
One council member who had supported the name change lost his post in elections two weeks ago. Another council member who also supported the name change survived by one vote. This week, the council voted to reverse itself and go back to calling the street Sixth Avenue. In a couple weeks, the council will have to formalize its reversal in another vote.
Wear your crash helmets. It won't be pretty.
Correct that. It's already ugly.
What's happened in Zephyrhills gives credence to every small Southern town stereotype. Bigoted and narrow-minded.
Honoring King shouldn't be a big deal. Naming a street after him is as common as naming a street for John Kennedy once was.
"I'm ashamed and embarrassed," said Liz Geiger, the council member who came within a vote of losing in the last election over the name change. "We're in a time tunnel, back 10, 20 years."
Geiger has a particular perspective on the heart of this. Zephyrhills has a road named after her husband's family, who were among the town's founders.
Opponents have argued that the process of naming the street was flawed. Some of those who signed a petition in favor live just outside the city limits. The woman who led the effort, Irene Dobson, wrote the names of some of her supporters on the petition. She has acknowledged this.
But you could fix the process and still name a street for King, if you had your heart in the right place. And they don't, in Zephyrhills. Opponents have repeated every tired argument ever made in any city - and it always happens - against naming a street for him.
As in, it's inconvenient for the people who live and work on the chosen street.
Or, the city didn't follow the will of the majority of residents. Should blacks in Zephyrhills have no voice, simply because they number only 300 or so in a city of 11,000?
This is my favorite: Having Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard on your address will be bad for property values.
Emotions are now so pitched in Zephyrhills that the city manager, Steve Spina, plans to meet soon with local ministers, all but one of them white, to see if they can help defuse the crisis in this small retiree haven. Spina isn't the only one thinking of both council politics and religion. Dobson, the woman who started it all, told me Thursday what they need in Zephyrhills now are "prayer warriors" to find a way out.
Assuming God intervenes in this sorry business, may He then do something about Ryan Pickett.
