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A novel mistake

Jay Fitzgerald cracks open William Martin's set-in-Boston novel, The Lost Constitution, and discovers a mistake no true Bostonian should make.

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Comments

The cruller thing was a great catch, but when did "triple deckers" become "three deckers"?

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I'll take your word - and link - that they're interchangeable terms now, but I never heard them called anything but triple deckers. I grew up in and lived in Dorchester for 37 years, so I don't know where the folks on the link get the idea that calling them triple-deckers in Dorchester is some sort of yuppie affectation.

Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com

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I'm pretty sure I got the "affectation" thing from a Dot rat. But you're one, too. Whom to trust, whom to trust on this crucial question? :-).

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I hear both words used interchangeably.

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Want a spuckie with that?

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This has always been one of my favorite regionalism collections.

Sub (or Submarine), Spuckie (or Spucky), Hero, Torpedo, Grinder, etc.

In my Dorchester neighborhood, they were always "subs", at least until a shop opened nearby called "Spukies."

(Note the lack of a "c", and ponder the pronunciation.)

Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com

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I was never a big cruller guy, so I somehow hadn't noticed their disappearance from DD. They still have the Crullers Francaise, I guess.

I was going to point out the "Three Decker" vs. "Triple Decker" as well. In my family, a mid-50's white flight to Weymouth family, everyone called them "triple deckers". But then, pretty much everyone in my neighborhood was from Savin Hill or Ashmont, so we didn't really have much regional variation in the Former Boston Neighborhood department.

And they were "subs" in Weymouth, not "spuckies". Grabbing the back of a car in the ice and riding along, however, depended on what part of Weymouth you were from -- "skid hopping" in South Weymouth, "Bumper Jumping" in Weymouth Landing. I never figured out what it was called in the rest of town.

-- Dave Adams
Teacher, Engineer, Dad, Bicyclist

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When I was a kid, it was called "skitching." However, that was not in Boston but the Midwest.

Wow, that brought me back. Thanks. I still remember the time a car surprised me by backing over me instead of going forward.

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William Martin was at the Harvard Coop tonight to promote his new book. He admitted to what he called "ego-Googling" and specifically mentioned Jay's blog entry. "I expected to get letters from the gun-nuts and the anti-gun nuts, but I never knew I'd hear from the cruller-nuts."

(Jay, why do you not allow people to leave comments in your own blog?)

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