Date:  Sat, 18 Mar 1995 21:47:22 -0600

From:  Joan Livingston-Webber <webber[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CWIS.UNOMAHA.EDU>

Subject: Chuck/Potholes



It's spring (oh hurray!) and the Omaha paper is advertising

a t-shirt fro the "official midlands driver" that has a large

banner on it, "I survived the chuckholes!" I remember chuckholes

from growing up in sw PA, 1950's. It didn't surprise me that

my children didn't know what it meant--they were raised in

neither PA nor Omaha. But I asked some teen-age natives and

they didn't know what they were either. Since coming to the

middle section of the country, I only remember hearing of

potholes. One young friend is asking her father, who was also

raised in Omaha. The cartoonist (who designed the t-shirt)

may hail from the east or be over 35 (or both). It has

made me curious about the distribution of potholes and

chuckholes.



(ps. the Omaha paper doesn't call this area

the midwest. It uses midlands or heartland--and has an

overtly stated fondness for heartland--a kind of sentimentality,

I think.) Is chuck/pothole regional, age-related or both? And, btw,

who was Chuck? I suppose someone will tell me that a chuck is

some piece on the axle of a horsedrawn wagon that broke or

fell in.

--

Joan Livingston-Webber  webber[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]unomaha.edu

"What gets better is the precision with which we vex each other."

                        -Clifford Geertz