My Favorite Homer Sign

We saw this sign and I had to ask my aunt, “What the heck is a china poot?”

At first I thought it was a synonym of the slang term ‘vart’ or ‘queeb’

vart (värt) or queeb (kweeb)
1. (n.) A discharge of gas from the female private area.

Auntie Lee said, “No, that is sick and wrong. But I wondered about the name too. There’s a China Poot Bay and a China Poot Lake. It took me almost two years of asking but it turns out there was a man named Henry Poot who was born in Seldovia, Alaska, married a Native woman, and was a hunter, trapper, and fisherman in the Homer area. His nickname was “China” due to his genial relationship with the local Chinese immigrants who worked the fisheries and helped build the railroad in the area.”

I said, “Um, if you last name was ‘Poot’ wouldn’t you want them to let you keep ‘Henry’ and maybe have them call you ‘China Henry,’ ‘Chinese Henry,’ ‘Henry China,’ or the less politically correct ‘Chinky H?’

Lee: “You’d think, but that’s Homer for you.”

Me: “Still, if I had a china poot, I’d got see my OB-GYN, PDQ.”