|
Lake name
can’t carry this tune
by Ed Patenaude
Worcester Telegram & Gazette
Merman, Bolger sang nonsense
This is to reprise recent
reference here to the Nov. 20 New York Times story about Lake
Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg.
Not that it’ll make any
difference, but I’m wary of the Times’ connection of Ethel Merman
and Ray Bolger to “The Lake Song.” The Bartlett High School Alumni
Choir’s rendition of the lake tune can be found on
www.OldeWebster.com.
There’s no doubt Merman-Bolger,
surely big names in the entertainment industry, once recorded a
song with lyrics about the lake’s long Indian name.
Several lines from “The Lake
Song” followed the Merman-Bolger paragraph in the Times:
“Oh, we took a walk one evening
and we sat down on a log by Lake
Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg” and so forth.
“The Lake Song” and the
Merman-Bolger tune are altogether different, even though I once
believed the second was a jazzed-up version of the first.
I’m now certain of the difference
because I listened to the Merman and Bolger voices Dec. 3. I had
the song on tape but had mislaid it. The Times story prompted a
search and my wife found the long-missing item. It’s one in a
series of novelty tunes packaged by the late Ralph Fleming,
probably when he was Exalted Ruler of Webster Lodge of Elks.
The music features a drum beat
and a staccato-like clip to the lake’s long name, making it an
unintelligible rhyme, drifting to something like “bunamoogle.”
There’s more nonsense: “Why you sneakie out of teepee?” with “...
Me no sleepie” as the response.
“The name of the lake is a
riddle” is the only line that seems to make sense, and it’s a
reference to the old hoax about the Indian treaty that restricted
local tribes to different ends of the lake, with no fishing in the
middle. The song was probably a clunker that star power couldn’t
carry.
Yes, I’ve got the recording, but
it’s stuck in a tape deck.
Stamped with a New York Times
imprimatur, the lake story made its way into the Sunday San
Francisco Chronicle Nov. 28. Dudley native James Theodores, the
retired chief of security for the World Bank, picked it up on
arrival in the West Coast city that day.
Now residents of Newport, R.I.,
Mr. Theodores and his wife are wintering in California. The story
type is set on a six-column format, wrapped below a 6-by-7-inch
photo taken of the lake and a 5-by-5-1/2-inch photo of the Lake
Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg sign. The
misspelling that must have some of the sign’s Massachusetts
Turnpike Authority and WDOChamber of Commerce sponsors red-faced
is there.
Altogether, and with a heading
that reads: “Residents protective of lake’s long name,” the
Chronicle filled a whole page in its features section. “I’m not
sure this article will result in a big blip in tourism for
Webster, but it is certain to get San Franciscans of all ages
cranked-up trying to pronounce … the name of the lake,” Mr.
Theodores wrote. |
