Jericho, Vermont Loses its Words -The Case of the Escaped Words

The Case of the Escaped Words

Vermont folktale
By Bernie Paquette

In the well read and always grammatically correct quiet village of Jericho, Vermont, where everything was always in its place, two quaint yet creative and lively libraries co-existed each with only a rare episode of the slightest disruption or improperly shelved book.  The townsfolk prided themselves in their mastery of language, as well as the detailed order of all within their homes and village and especially within their beloved libraries of dictionaries, stories, poems, and all manner of correct language.

The bustling Jericho Country Store often chimed with local gossip but not so on the strange day that started with a scarlet red sky in the middle of winter. The cow path narrow aisles with items stacked on each side nearly ceiling-high offered a church confessional zone of perceived privacy to each of the cadre. Listen in on some of the conversations bouncing about in the normally commune village store. 

“I hear tell Martha, who was late for her own wedding because she could not leave the house until she had hung up the wash, and who has never had to deposit fifty cents into the jar for not putting something away – threw off her flannel shirt onto, now get this, onto the floor. Moreover, there was a chair right next to her where she could have placed it at the very least, if not hung it up like a proper citizen of our town. Can you imagine? She claimed Tom, her husband, stoked the woodstove as full as to nearly bake her alive. Still, to throw her shirt onto the floor – she may need to move out of town, don’t you think?”

This concern of recent disorders spread like spilled jelly beans among many the townsfolk securing a stranglehold over any other topics that morning until - Someone, perhaps, and most likely an out of town passerby, questioned the clerk, why the banner on the front of the store read “In this place we thee, wed for better or 'worser', till this town we depart”. Now at first, all became quiet in the store at the sound of such incoherent, adulterated, bastardized, primitive word as ‘worser’ spoken in their town in broad daylight in the presence of proper citizens.

“What does it mean?” they all whispered as though a conspiracy against their town had sprung from Mary’s carelessly flung shirt and now this inarticulate advertisement.  Soon, the discussion went audibly viral, as more and more folks came into the store after viewing the banner, and none departed. Chaos required Community Cohesion. 

Meanwhile, the overwhelmed visitor asked the clerk “please hurry with the purchase transaction as the pre-board flight out of this crazy town is fifteen minutes away.” In an unseemly manner the clerk, and this was later construed as unusual behavior even by her own admittance, responded, “What does it mean to pre-board? Do you get on before you get on?”  Morphemes were not a thing to joke about in Jericho, Vermont!

Again, the entire store fell to such a hush that the coolers stopped moving refrigerated air lest the entire citizenry within the store become frozen in place. Some folks fainted, some felt warm under the collar, some questioned within themselves, “What is this town coming to? The next thing you know big city colloquialisms will find their way into town, and we will all go to H_ double L in a handbasket.”  

All this breaking of Jericho’s grammatical wall of exactitude was riot fodder at the store. Similar upturning events of a smaller scale were occurring in nearly every home in Jericho, threatening the death of a town by a thousand cuts. 

Take, John Smith for example. John, after a long day's work at the Old Red Mill Book Binding shop came home, looked about his requisite orderly, uncluttered abode, then sat down to read a book. Promptly his wife, Henrietta, requested John to organize the box of toothpicks as a few of them had somehow dislodged from their proper upright position. “You don’t need to do it right now; go on reading your book and get to it this evening,” she said. The loving husband responded, “That’s ok, the words will be there when I get back after putting the toothpicks in their place”.

However, upon sitting back dreamily upon the perfectly positioned chair under the floor lamp within 3 centimeters of the best lighting position possible, John was puzzled. The book he was reading sat on the arm of the chair. However, it did not sit entirely properly or entirely in its place, as all things in their house (and every house in Jericho) must always be.

Pages in the book rustled ever so slightly as though an outdoor breeze caught an edge of the well-flipped pages projecting them upwards giving light and buoyancy to the captured words, sentences, and until now reliably grammatically told story.

John stared in disbelief, if not angst, and listened to a whispering of words, and then entire sentences, like the squeals of pigs finding a narrow opening in the fence, all scrambling to escape without getting found out.

John, attempting to open the book cover further, felt some resistance, as though the book did not want to acknowledge the crime of displacement or escape. John stared in disbelief at the nearly blank pages within the now opened book. Only bits and pieces of the story remained on the pages – for some of the words had indeed escaped!

“Where did the words escape to?” wondered John. Meanwhile, Henrietta seeking peanuts in the pantry, for a Peanut Brittle recipe, stood aghast when upon opening a can labeled ‘peanuts’ found only nuts and bolts.

Meanwhile John, who had not yet recovered from what he thought was a linguistic nightmare, heard all kinds of chatter bellowing out from the bookshelf as though hundreds of storytellers were all telling their tales at the same time. To make matters worse, each of their verses was fragmented and disjointed.  

Before Henrietta could admonish John about the mislabeled and misplaced nuts and bolts, they both were taken aback at the bindings of the books on the bookshelf. The spines of the previously alphabetically sorted distinguished books were now in no order whatsoever and the titles had changed. They now listed titles such as I will eat Fish for dinner and drank Milk, I walk to the store and I bought Milk, Hemingway like Fish, I don’t want no Pudding, Because I ate Dinner, and We all eat the Fish and then made Dessert [1]. The authors included names like Sweet Sucrose, Nutrient Less, Stabilizer & Thickener, and publishers of Leavening Agents and Firming Agents.  Gone were works by Dickerson, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and others.

Before either John or Marietta could respond to the utter displacement chaos and the grammatical errors (what would townsfolk say?), the refrigerator in the kitchen caught their attention. There seemed to be an odor of mothballs coming from the spacious fridge. Opening the double doors revealed a disorganized closet of vintage clothing. The clothing labels read Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, and Harriet Beecher Stowe.

All across town, homes normally fanatical about order in place and order in language, discovered both had escaped and reorganized into pure malfunction. Jericho was in disarray and incoherent. Jericho had a case of Aphasia with a previously unknown cause – Word Escape.

Jejune Jargonistic language and Jangling were Jarring;
Jeopardizing Jericho’s Judicious Jaunty Journalistic Style
making it nearly

Elliptical
not Eloquent
                        discussion

Ran ramrod against all righteous efforts towards any Rationalization

Implying utter Indifference.

Could this be the beginning of Canonicals of Circuitous speech?

Or, will an Oration Ordinance Overcome Jericho’s
Orgasm of
Out the window lost words?  

Jejune - devoid of significance or interest

Jangling - producing discordant sounds
Jaunty – fashionable and stylish
Elliptical – using ellipsis, especially to be difficult to understand

Throughout the morning as this all transpired, the two Jericho libraries remained safe havens for words, sentences, book titles, and the orderly progression and settlement of language, as well as placement of things. The libraries were once again recognized  (particularly in times of disorder and incorrect grammatical utterances and writing) for free educational resources for everyone, important roles in English language learning (and re-learning), preservers of history and truth, and a place to connect with other community members [2].

And so, soon the well-read and almost always grammatically correct quiet village of Jericho was able to put things back in order without overrefinement, and correct the Run-On Sentences, and Comma Splices, Sentence Fragments, Double Negatives, Pronoun Errors, Subject-Verb Agreement errors, and Verb Tense errors within its borders.

Since then, from time to time, now and then, Martha’s husband again heats up the woodstove a bit much, followed by Martha throwing her flannel shirt on the floor. This now gives folks at the Jericho Country Store a reason to giggle but is no longer enough to cause a gaggle.

Moreover, occasionally, though the librarians would never admit it, a modern-day cooking book seemingly on its own accord, gets wedged into the section of distinguished nineteenth-century authors.  For sure, the town folks dropped their insistence on not allowing even the slightest disorderliness or improperly shelved books at homes or at the libraries.

As far as pride in their mastery of language, the town folks still refuse to show any modesty, “We just ain’t having it. Jeezum crow, if we give up our language we give up all”.

Jericho’s libraries, librarians, and volunteers rock!

Joan Didion said, "Grammar is a piano I play by ear."

Bernie says, "Grammar is an obstacle course, I play by trial and error."

Maeve is my constant inspiration in her love and knowledge of words. And I am so very happy she finds mirth in my frequently making up words (like fervitude).

 Locally sourced, Organic Jericho Storytelling

"Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face." Victor Hugo 
"A good time to laugh is any time you can." Dr. Madan Kataria

Recommended reading and available at the Jericho Library: The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris.
In 2007 the Oxford Junior Dictionary was published. A sharp-eyed reader noticed that 40 common words concerning nature had been dropped. No longer being used enough by children - was the reason. Words such as acorn, dandelion, fern, heron, newt, otter,  kingfisher, and willow. In response, R. Macfarlane and J. Morris set out to create a book that conjures 20 of these lost words and the beings they name.

Honor your language and nature.

Let us be sure nature words are not lost to Jericho's youth and adults!

Footnotes
1. ^ Examples of incorrect grammar taken from https://examples.yourdictionary.com/bad-grammar-examples.html
2. ^  Reasons libraries are essential taken from https://www.bustle.com/p/7-reasons-libraries-are-essential-now-more-than-ever-43901

2. Descriptive vs prescriptive grammar. https://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/what-correct-language