The hambone redux

[Wilson Gray]

I'm afraid so. My best buddy in the Army was named Davidica McLain
("Mack Lane"). He eventually had it legally changed to "David," after
I talked him into moving from Backwoods, NC, to Los Angeles.

You have to remember that very few country colored folk had access to
the kind of education that would have taught them anything about
Classical Latin and grammatical gender. I'm sure that both sets of
parents invented "Delecta" and "Davidica" off the tops of their heads,
without the foggiest notion that    "-a" had anything to do with women
or (historically) with the Feminine gender. There are Biblical male
names like "Noah," "Joshua" (Josh away"), "Elija," "Jonah," etc.
ending in [-@] to provide examples.

-Wilson

On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 12:20 PM, Mark Mandel <thnidu at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>  Poster:       Mark Mandel <thnidu at GMAIL.COM>
>  Subject:      Re: The hambone redux
>  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>  HIS real name of Delecta Clark?
>
>  Add to the "how could they do that to their baby?" file.
>
>  m a m
>
>  On Sun, Apr 13, 2008 at 8:39 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  > On tonight's episode of The Simpsons, Lurline Lumpkin's father did the
>  > hambone in accompaniment to his daughter's singing.
>  >
>  > For the more mature among us: did any y'all know that Dee Clark, the
>  > R&B singer who had a hit in 1961 with "Raindrops," was, as a child
>  > under his, one of The Hambone Kids of 1952?
>  >
>  > -Wilson
>  >
>
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All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
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-----
 -Sam'l Clemens

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