A big village . . .

[Charles Doyle]

Last night I brought up the "village" matter with my wife,
who (as I reported here earlier) spent the first 19 years of
her life in the VILLAGE of Oak Park, IL.  She declared, with
just a touch of hauteur, that Oak Park is "the largest
VILLAGE in the world" (or at least it so claimed in the
1960s and 1970s), with a population of 60,000+.  (She was
not amused by my adverting to the old gag about the carnival
sideshow that boasted of having the world's tallest dwarf.)

Another interesting detail:  Oak Parkers can go "UPTOWN,"
into the central business and shopping area of Oak Park
proper, or they can go "DOWNTOWN," travelling 8 or 10 miles
eastward (by car or on the el) to Chicago.

--Charlie



---- Original message ----
>Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2006 01:07:50 -0400
>From: Seán Fitzpatrick <grendel.jjf at VERIZON.NET>
>Subject: Re: Peasant?  and Village?
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
>---------------------- Information from the mail header ----
-------------------
>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-
L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       =?iso-8859-1?Q?Se=E1n_Fitzpatrick?=
<grendel.jjf at VERIZON.NET>
>Subject:      Re: Peasant?  and Village?
>------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------
>
><<My wife's hometown of Oak Park, IL, (old stomping grounds
of Ernest
>Hemingway and Frank Lloyd Wright) pointedly refers to
itself as a =
>"village."
>An upscale suburb of Chicago, it is a separate,
incorporated =
>municipality.
>Is "village" perhaps a legal designation for certain kinds
of towns in
>Illinois?-- Charles Doyle >>
>
>=20
>
>That description in most of its particulars could describe
my wife=92s
>hometown of Swarthmore, PA, which until the consolidation
movement of a
>generation ago had its own school system.  Villages are
smaller than but =
>not
>subordinate to townships, which are subdivisions of the
county.  It is
>similar in New York, where I lived in the Village of
Endicott and in the
>Village of Johnson City, but they call townships
=93towns=94.

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