"Gyro" at Chicago's Parthenon Restaurant

[Mike Salovesh]

Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:
>
>    The Chicago Tribune did a series on the city's top ten restaurants, by > type.  The top Greek restaurant was Parthenon.  From the CHICAGO TRIBUNE, 27 > May 1971, section 2, pg. 19:
>
> _This Parthenon, Too, Is Classic Greek_
>   (...)(Col. 2--ed.) Next came _gyros_ ($1.95 a plate), unusual, intriguing > and thoroly (sic) Greek.

Hi, Barry!

Chicagoans (at least us old, old Chicagoans) wouldn't think of (sic)ing
that odd spelling.

Oh, we'd recognize that it's odd.  But we'd probably react more or less
as suggested in an old Quaker saying:  "Thee should not be upset when
thee steps in dog-doo.  Consider the source from which it comes."

Well, I first heard that from an old Quaker; you're reading it now from
another. For me, that indisputably makes it an old Quaker saying.

"Colonel" Robert McCormick, the long-time owner of the Chicago Tribune,
was a dedicated supporter of a program of spelling reform that came out
of his own little head.  "Thoroly" is of a piece with many of his
creations.  As owner of what he insisted on advertising as "The World's
Greatest Newspaper", he would amend the Trib's style book whenever the
whim hit him.  His "reformed" spellings aren't the only examples of his
idiosyncrasies that survive him at the Trib, but they surely are, quite
literally, the most visible.

-- mike salovesh                    <salovesh at niu.edu>
PEACE !!!

P.S.:  Your TV cable system probably has another example, if it brings
in "superstation" WGN-TV.  The call letters "WGN" were Col. McCormick's
way of advertising the Tribune on the radio station he also owned.

"WGN" got its name as an abbreviation of "World's Greatest Newspaper".

If you ever run out of things to do, it might be fun to find the sources
of other radio and TV call letters.  The Chicago Tribune wasn't the only
newspaper to shape the call letters of an associated radio station.
There's WTMJ, for "The Milwaukee Journal", for example. (Since U.S.
stations generally begin with either "W" or "K", the first letter
sometimes isn't a signifier. Viz: KQED.)