Boston College - Sub Turri Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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There is a legend in Boston about a nnan named Charlie. Charlie is the man who never returned from his ride on the MBTA. Would he ever return? Well he hasn ' t yet. Charlie has never been able to pay his fare to get off the T . So he still sits in the window and waves at his wife every day because he is too poor to leave . . . T was short for MBTA — Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, Boston ' s subway system. For many Bostonians, T stood for transportation, trouble, traffic, terrific, train, trolley, and trauma. The problem was not with the cars themselves: they were in remarkably good condition. The trains themselves were quite clean, fast and convenient. For sixty or seventy-five cents many Bostonians had the same problem Charlie had — they never had enough change to pay the fare. Naturally the best part of the T, (or worst, depending on your viewpoint) was the people. Half the fun was watching the charac- ters that got on. Hopping on at the BC stop, passengers consisted of alligator-badged preppies in docksiders and Nantucket tans: near Harvard Ave. the T was inundated by leather-jacketed hoodlums out for an evening ' s prowl; Kenmore Square deposited an odd assortment of students. Orientals and baseball fans; Copley resounded with the clinks of money from the pockets of the well-to-do shoppers on Newbury Street: Park smelled faintly of incense and Cuban cigars as the Krishnas boarded in search of converts: from Government Center a daily batch of shiny-shoed young executives headed for their prestigious Downtown offices. In between stops, a myraid of passengers might board — every- one from bag ladies to eccentric millionaires, from authors to airplane pilots, from foreign students to government workers. In this group of people, it wasn ' t hard to think that Charlie might be sitting somewhere along the aisle. He ' d fit right in! — KW, KK, KG 4l Hi i 20 BOSTON Bostonian folklore has a legend about Char- lie and the MBTA. Like Charlie. Bostonians and visitors alike have a variety of experiences on the ' T, from finding change, missing train, riding down the rails and just watching the people.

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For Bahston, For Bahston Would you like atonic? Someone asked a freshman at a reception four years ago. No thanks, the freshman replied, puz- zled but gracious. I feel fine. So began an encounter with Boston En- glish, the language that predominates a stu- dents ' experience in the Hub of the Uni- verse. Imported by the first colonists, enriched by waves of (mostly Irish) immigrants, made in- ternationally recognizable during the pres- idency of John F. Kennedy, and tempered by the generations who have spoken it, the Boston Accent has become as recogniz- able as the city ' s scrod and Faneuil Hall. The induence of Boston Speech is reflected in the seaboard dialectics from Maine to Cape Cod, and it extends cis far west as the Con- necticut River. The most notable feature of Boston speech is the r-less quality of many words. Beyond the sterotypical Pahk the cah in the Hahvahdyahd, an expression that most stu- dents probably saw on ashtrays and on post- cards before students enrolled at BC, most encounters with Bostonese came when buying buthday cahds, attending vahsity football games, and leahning about Kahl Mahx in the School of Ahts and Sciences. It is by the r-less quality that we say of the Bostonian, By his speech you will know him. Another phonetic feature often cissociated with Bostonians ' speech is the elongated a, as in your awan ' s glasses. Even the na- tives tend to hear this, however, as a charac- teristic of an aristocratic accent more associ- ated with social dass than with regional un- iqueness, more likely to be heard in the com- mon room at Choate than in the bah in Dah- chesta. Tonic, (meaning soft drink) is Boston ' s most distinguishing trade word. In addition to drinking lots of tonic in Boston, students may also have tried johnnycaltes, or en- joyed eating quoiiogs. And undoubtedly, students have drank a frappe and have had jimmies on their ice cream. With the possible exception of the ex- pression so don ' t 1 (to indicate complete agreement), the language of Boston has no syntactical features to distinguish it from lan- guage in the rest of America. Banners con- taining grammatically flawed expressions like Stomp Them Gophers are not ex- pected to be seen in front of a home-grown Boston cheering section. On the contrary, people typcially associate the quality of Bos- ton ' s grammar with the quality often ascribed to Boston ' s natives — proper. In The Grapes of Wrath, Ivy hits the nail on the head concerning the linguistic state of affairs: Ever ' body says words different. Arkansas folks say ' em different, and Oklahomy folks say em different. And we seen a lady from Massachusetts, an ' she said ' em differentest of all. Couin ' hardly make out what she was sayin ' . After only a few months in the city, anyone would be equipped to make out what any lady from Massachusetts is sayin ' I — Professor John F. Savage students soon lose their native accents and dialects upon coming to Boston; soon they ' re they pahking theh cahs and riding the 1. 22 BOSTON