Rants from the Relic “Can I Go With?”

The other day something triggered a memory of “Iron” Mike Hillman, the late Ely historian, philosopher, radio personality, and maitre d’hotel. Actually, the memory was more about something Mike often said:  “If you’re like me, and I know I am...”, a witty self-supporting assertion.

But beside the little inside smile I got from the memory, it got me thinking about pronouns and that got me thinking about prepositions and my home town.

First, there are two kinds of pronouns -- those that are socially and politically polarizing like everything else these days  --  and those taught by Mr. Dreschler in my eighth grade English class in 1962.  Let’s proceed here and discuss only the latter.  No inflammable statements ahead.    

Mr. D simplified pronouns for us with these two multi-syllable creations:  I-He-She-We-They (the subjective pronouns) and Me-Him-Her-Us-Them (the objective pronouns)  He blurted them repeatedly as “IHESHEWETHEY” and “MEHIMHERUSTHEM.” To use the standard pronoun, all you had to do was recognize how it was being used in a sentence, i.e. was it a subject or an object?, and then apply the pronoun from the right string.  IHESHEWETHEY or MEHIMHERUSTHEM.

And yet, over the past several decades that convention has been lost, especially when using “I” versus “me.”  How often do you hear “Bill and I saw a great game last night.”  You’re more likely to hear “Me and Bill, we, like, you know, you know the thing.”  Not a big loss to our society, I guess, but one that irks this codger.

And thinking about parts of speech got me to thinking about prepositions.  They’re shifting, too, and it seems not only is this being propelled by the cheap, speedy communications we enjoy, but even an event like the relocation of a retail grocery can upset language.  At least at the end of the road.

In this cozy town we used prepositions when and where we felt like it.

Sometimes economically:  “Hey, Doll, wanna go show?  ‘The Wizard of Oz’ is at the State.”

Sometimes misplaced.  “Sure, Doug, can my sister come with?”

“OK, but we gotta stop up Zup’s first.”

Did you catch that?  For over a century, we Elyites automatically used the prepositional phrase “up Zup’s.”  It fit perfectly, appropriately indicating that to complete this errand, there was a hill ahead.  It metaphorically expressed our self-reliance and work ethic.

Now what?  They’ve moved and we need to adopt a different preposition or be topographically incorrect.  “Down Zup’s” sounds like a protest march chant.  “Over Zup’s” evokes a drone hovering over the property.  “East to Zup’s” sounds pedantic.

Here’s my suggestion.  Since we cheerfully used “go show” for decades, why don’t we all agree to “go Zup’s”.  This is correct, colloquial, and safe.

And there’s nothing more important in our culture today than safe language.

Doug Luthanen grew up in Ely and graduated from Memorial High School in 1967. He wrote a weekly viewpoint column for the Northwest Arkansas Times for four years and is an occasional contributor to The Ely Echo.