Footnotes: downtown, murderburger, Real McCoy

[GEORGE THOMPSON]

        Footnotes to previous postings:

        1:      I had noted that my mother-in-law had thought of the central
section of her riverside town as "uptown", because it lay up stream
from her house, with reference to the river's current.  I have since
asked my wife whether people from the opposite end of town, (where
her Aunt Maude lived), thought of it as "downtown".  She replied: "If
that's the sort of stuf you people discuss, you all have too much
time on your hands."  Her very words.  Can't imagine what she meant
by it.

        2:      The Times hass claimed that NYC schoolchildren call hamburgers
"murderburgers".  I asked my wife if she had ever heard the term,
during her stints of cafeteria monitoring; catching her in a
complying mood, she said "No".  My son, a graduate of Arturo
Toscanini (PS 215) in Gravesend, Mark Twain JHS in Coney Island, and
Stuyvesant HS, in Manhattan, has not heard the word.

        3:      After my second posting under the heading "A Couple of folk
Etymologists", regarding the term "The Real McCoy", I was reading
the book "Shipwrecks in New York Waters," by Paul C. Morris & William
P. Quinn, Orleans, Mass., Parnassus Impr, 1989.  (As a reformed
English major, I frequently demonstrate my liberation from fine
litrachoor by reading some god-awful twaddle.)  On p. 197 I find the
following: "The term "the real McCoy", came from the fact that
Captain [William] McCoy sold only the best and dealt fairly with his
customers."  This with reference to rum-running during Prohibition.

GAT