Tuesday Voice: Jake

By Vic Midyett

During Prohibition in the United States, whisky was often called "jake," which was a slang term for Jamaica Ginger extract, often used for flavoring. A related term was "jake leg," referring to a paralysis caused by drinking improperly distilled or contaminated liquor.
    Anyway, soon after Shirley and I were married, she told me a story about her grandparents. They lived in the woods out in the Tennessee countryside. It was the Depression, and Granddad didn't seem to have a job, but he always seemed to have a little money for Grandma to buy what they needed. One day she decided to try to find out where the money came from, and she followed Granddad into the woods, to discover that he had a moonshine still hidden out there! Well, as she already suspected this, she had taken a hatchet along with her, and she commenced to smash the still to smithereens. She killed it utterly.
    But Grandma and Granddad loved each other very much and Granddad's reaction was simply, "Well, Annie, from now on you'll just have to be my Jake."
    Since I had already noticed some of Grandma's "streaks" in Shirley, I decided to nickname her Jake also. She liked it and started to introduce herself as Jake.
    At Christmas a few years ago, when she worked in a company with over 100 employees, they and their spouses were invited to a big office party. At one point I didn't know where Shirley had gone, so I asked some of her co-workers where she was. They said they didn't know a Shirley. So I asked if they knew a Jake. "Oh yeah, she's right over there!" Ha! She had worked for this company for two years and everyone knew her only as Jake. They'd never heard of Shirley.
_______________
Copyright © 2013 by Vic Midyett

Comment box is located below