MTA (More Trouble Ahead) nicknames

[Jonathan Lighter]

The whole story is told here :

http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/jdreed/t/charlie.html

Bess Lomax Hawes is the younger sister of the late Alan Lomax and daughter of the pioneer folksong collector John A. Lomax.  She was one of the Almanac Singers (folkies of 1940-41), a group including, among others, Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie.

JL

"James A. Landau" <JJJRLandau at AOL.COM> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "James A. Landau"
Subject: Re: MTA (More Trouble Ahead) nicknames
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In a message dated Thu, 24 Mar 2005 10:34:33 -0500,
Page Stephens wrote:

> For your information if you ask most of the people I know about the MTA
> their first reference is probably to The MTA Song which was a major hit for
> The Kingston Trio many years ago.
>
> Almost none of them have ever heard of its antecedents which were The Ship
> Which Never Returned and even more famous The Wreck of the Old 97 both of
> which shared the same tune.
>
> The reference in the MTA song is Boston for those of you who have never
> heard the song.

Learn something new every day! I knew the MTA song from elementary school
days, and I knew "The Wreck of the Old 97" (in the Chad Mitchell Trio version
"Superskier") from the same period and I never realized they had the same tune!

Boston's mass transit system became the "Metropolitan Transit Authority" in
1947, when the city took over the privately-owned Boston Elevated Railway. The
name was changed to "Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority" (generally
known as "the T") ) in 1964 when a number of communities outside Boston joined
in. I don't know when New York City's mass-transit transit system became
known as the MTA.

(Reference: Brian J. Cudahy "Change at Park Street Under" Brattleboro VT: The
Stephen Greene Press, 1972, ISBN 0-8289-0173-2.)

As for the song "MTA", Cudahy says (page 53)
"Composed [sic] and written by Jacqueline Steiner and Bess Hawes As
recorded for Capitol Records by the Kingston Trio, THE M.T.A. plummeted [sick]
to popularity nation-wide."

The MBTA inspired at least two other literary works. In the late 1970's
there was a musical written and performed about the MBTA---I can dig up the
reference if anyone asks. It seems to have flopped and been forgotten. There was
also a science fiction story "A Subway Named Mobius" by A. J. Deutsch
(Astounding Science Fiction, December 1950, reprinted by Clifton Fadiman in "Fantasia
Mathematica")

Something that I have never been able to confirm or refute about the MTA
song: someone told me that the original version read
Fight the fare increase
Vote for Walter J. O'Brien
and "had to be recalled when it was discovered that O'Brien was a Socialist."
One big trouble with this story is that the Kingston Trio version runs
Fight the fare increase
Vote for George O'Brien
which may or may not be politically acceptable but at least scans better.
Does anyone know if there was a politician at the time named O'Brien who ran for
office on a platform which included fighting the fare increase, and if so
what party did he belong to?

- James A. Landau



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