We were traveling through the mid-South region of America a few years ago and found ourselves in a little restaurant in the quiet college town of Carbondale, Illinois. As the meal was wrapping up I asked our server if she had any suggestions for us as we explored the area.
“Well, you could check out downtown Carbondale.”
Except, she didn’t say Carbondale, the three-syllable version.
Instead, she fancified it into a four-syllable word with emphasis on the second syllable and splitting of the third syllable — Car-BON-duh-lay. Feel free to stop and say it out loud right now. Because I love that kind of stuff and got her joke, Southern Illinois University will always be located in a French-sounding town because that’s how I’ve pronounced it ever since.
When our youngest child was taking guitar lessons, his instructor introduced him to a different pronunciation of the metropolis located between Kalkaska and South Boardman known as Fife Lake. It’s “Fife Lake” to most but can be pronounced Fee-Fee Luh-key. Again, stop and say it out loud. You can probably guess which way I have pronounced it since the day our budding guitar player passed it along to me.
My roots are buried in the shadows of the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes and the sleepy little town of Empire. I was telling a friend about my childhood there one time and she chimed in that her mother informed them that they were going up north to vacation in a place called “Ahm-peer.” Apparently mom wanted the kids to think they were heading to someplace very fancy. The first 50-or-so years of my life it’s been simply, “Empire.” Since I heard that story though, it has never been pronounced that way in my head.
Another sweet little northern Michigan town is the town of Onekama in Manistee County. Our high school joined an athletic conference with theirs while I was in high school. Most of us hadn’t heard of the place before and as school-aged kids on long bus trips to other schools do, we parsed the name until someone came up with “One Comma.” I’m not saying we invented it, but it was the first time I heard it and it’s been called that in my head ever since.
Any column about twisting the names and things around us in the name of comedy must include this very newspaper. Have you ever picked up a newspaper and asked yourself this?
“I wonder what’s new in the “Wretched Eagle?”
You only say it because you love us …
It’s natural and comes with the territory with names like these. I certainly hope residents of these friendly little towns get the joke. Other fun references I’ve heard around the state range from Kalamazoo being shortened to “Kazoo,” Ann Arbor referred to as “AA,” Cadillac being referenced as “Cattle Tracks” and my own hometown of Williamsburg being called “BillyBurg.”
Anyone who has lived anywhere long has played the same game with towns and businesses nearby. In the name of research for this piece I posed a question on one of those “Overheard on …” places on Facebook. The post even referenced my Fife Lake and Onekama examples, hoping for some more fun ones. Sadly, the ones I’ve mentioned above were the only names I could list and still consider it “fun.” The great towns of Kalkaska and Mancelona received dozens and dozens of posted mentions using subpar epithets. Not as “fun” as my other examples, but I must admit that they do occupy space in my head.