stompin' in the north

[James Harbeck]

>Even up in the frozen North (Minnesota) we said "He stomped on it," though
>"stamp out the fire" (verb + particle) would be used.

Frozen north = Minnesota? LOL. I grew up in western Canada, and there
are two things about American geography that have always seemed funny
to me: a) that Ohio is in the Midwest; b) that anything south of the
49th parallel could somehow be the "north" ("lost in the north woods"
to me sounds more like being in doo-doo somewhere close to the
Yukon). There was a third thing I thought was funny -- the motto on
New Jersey plates -- but then I got to Princeton and points south and
realized maybe it wasn't originally a joke.

For what it's worth, in Alberta we used "stomp" as a verb, but mainly
intransitively, and "stamp" also as a verb, transitively or
intransitively. A tourism promotion in the '80s, whereby you got a
booklet with pages for the different regions of the province and the
idea was to visit them all and collect stamps (I can't remember
whether they were of the stick-on or rubber-stamp variety) was called
"Stamp around Alberta."

James Harbeck.

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