MTA (More Trouble Ahead) nicknames

[Wilson Gray]

On Mar 26, 2005, at 8:34 PM, James A. Landau wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "James A. Landau" <JJJRLandau at AOL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: MTA (More Trouble Ahead) nicknames
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> In a message dated Thu, 24 Mar 2005 10:34:33 -0500,
>  Page Stephens <hpst at EARTHLINK.NET> 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
> <snip> 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")
>

"A Subway Named Mobius" by A. J. Deutsch. Astounding Science Fiction,
December 1950.

I remember this story. I was a high-school student at the time. I'd
never heard of Moebius and his famous strip till I read that story.
Furthermore, reading ASF introduced me to the Klein bottle, to the
tesseract, and to M.I.T. To paraphrse what Rick James said about
cocaine,  "ASF was a hell of a mag."

-Wilson Gray

> 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
>