It’s All in the Moose Drool 
 

5-25-03
 

Dubois, Wyoming 

     Blame it all on Missoula.  Which, by the way, is a really cool college town in Northwest Montana where someday I will return to spend more time checking out this pretty part of the world while at the same time consuming copious quantities of  “Moose Drool”, a really, really good, black as the ace of spades, beer that goes down even easier than Guinness.  And, trust me on this one, Guinness goes down real easy.

     Missoula’s daily newspaper is the Missoulian.   Its name is derived from the manner the local citizenry, people residing in the shadows of the University of Montana, refer to themselves.  Ever since I first set eyes on the Missoulian, then bicycled on to Butte and south through Ennis to Yellowstone Park, out of the park and into Moran Junction and south to Dubois, Wyoming the same interrogative has been at the forefront of my memory bank.

     Just who is the official entity charged with designating suffixes for towns?  Why in “Happy Valley” are folks from Grand Junction, Grand Junctionites, but those living to our East are Palisadians.  Our Centennial State of Colorado has Aspenites, Boulderites and Denverites but in Arvada you find Arvadans.  Thortonites live side by side on the Front Range with Northglenners.  How did all this come to pass?

    Why do we have Chicagoans but not New Yorkerans?  They’re not Bostonites but Bostonians.  In Eastern Pennsylvania one finds Philadelphians but across the Keystone State one finds Pittsburghers. I know, I know, in Hamburg, Germany one needs ketchup, mustard and some relish in suffixing the citizens of that fair city which must mean the same situation exists on this side of the Atlantic to the citizens in Kentucky’s state capitol city of Frankfort.

     Speaking of capitols, the nut, fruit and flake capitol located to our west is filled with ans.  San Franciscans, San Diegans and Santa Barbarans.  But if you live in Los Angeles you’re an Angelino.  So, as my daughters are want to remark, “ Like who was in charge on that one?”

    Sometimes the suffix for a city is right on.  I saw many residents of West Yellowstone, Montana who were really qualified to be called West Yellowstoners.

     States are no better.  Just go across the Upper Midwest.  You have Minnesotans, Wisconsinites and Michiganders.  Ganders?  Do you know any other ganders?  With the University of Oregon being the home of the “Ducks” shouldn’t folks from that state be Oreganders.  But no, they’re Oregonians.  Who decided Oreganders and Oregonites were out and Oregonians was in?  And should it be that Oregonians were in or is it singular and they was in.  This whole exercise is a real downhill slide grammatically.

   Then you have the cop-out states.  Maine-ites? Maine-ians?  Mainers?  No possible way.  You live in Maine; you’re a Down Easter.  If the people of Maine, and we don’t really know if the decision was theirs or if the fault lies with some federal government grammarian, are going to be identified with a direction, why aren’t they Up Easters since their neighbor Canada is up.  It’s Cuba that is down.   Well at least the “Great White North” was always on top when reading the map hanging over the blackboard on the front wall in Mr. Smith’s social studies classroom at Cambridge High.  That was a long time ago back in Illinois.

      Speaking of Illinois, soon I will be pedaling across the Eye states.  One expects Iowans to be in Iowa and Indianans to be in Indiana but just whom will I find in Illinois?  I don’t know yet once upon a time I was one of them.  We were not Illinoisians, or Illinoisites or Illinoisers but either Illini, which memory recalls was an Indian tribe, or a Land of Lincolner, which ties all citizens of the Prairie State to the coattails of a President born a Kentuckian and raised an Indianan. 

    Why isn’t the Kennedy clan ever described as being Massachusettsians or Massachusetters or Massachusites (good luck if your trying to read this out loud) but instead are referred to as Bay Staters.  And since we’ re in New England who decided people from New Hampshire would be New Hampshire-ites rather than New Hampshirians, which when you say it out loud sounds like something one would be called just after a haircut.