Jackie and I lived in Kalamazoo for the first few years after we got married and we have now been back in town for a few years. The street with most of the malls, restaurants and other enterprise in the area is Westnedge Avenue, pronounced West needgs (as in need followed by a gs), not West - Nedge (edge preceded by an N) as heard so often on a particular TV advertisement. The main shopping areas on Westnedge are located in the city of Portage (Port Ege, not Port Age).
The three main ways that Jackie and I might take when heading to Westnedge would be via Kilgore, Milhem (Mill em, not Mill Ham) or Romence roads. On all three routes we cross a road called Lovers Lane. Jackie was actually in a very bad car accident while in high school at the intersection of Lovers Lane and the aptly named Kilgore Road.
After about the 10th time I remarked to Jackie while crossing Lovers Lane while on Romence that it would be so cool to tell people that we lived on the corner of Romence Road and Lovers Lane she remarked to me that Romence was pronounced Row Mence, not Row Mance. I knew that, I believe I actually pronounced it the proper way, but my brain had always registered the name with the meaning "romance." That probably makes me a romantic, if not then at least a romencnick.
Pronunciations of common words can vary quite a bit from region to region. For example, here in West Michigan words with AR are very harsh, or hARRsh. Our friends from Missouri pronounce park as pork while we overkill it as pARRRRk. Hey hon, let's grab some pop (not soda or coke) and take the cAAR to the pARRK.
When we did road testing in Holland we would need to get on I96 West. The green road sign would give the location down I96 West as Benton Harbor. (Note: When you could first arrive at a beautiful destination such as Saugatuck/Douglas or South Haven, why, except for the minor fact that I96/US31 merged with I94 60 miles later, would anyone mention Benton Harbor?). The people translating for our Hispanic costumers would always pronounce the city as Ben tone whore bore while I would properly give it as Ben Ton HARRR BRRR.
Anyway, back to being a romencnick, I noticed this week that the name of one of my customers was someone whose name was Romeo Love. No middle name. Now really, where else during the normal course of your day are you going to run into someone who calls himself Romeo Love? Jackie was dying for me to come home and tell her more about Mr. Love.
Turns out he was a middle aged African American man, pudgy, about 5'6" tall, with short, greased, curly black hair. He wore lots of gold bling and had a huge diamond ear stud, although it was so big it might have been glass. His sister brought him in an ordinary Chevy Malibu, but with a name like that I might have expected a pink Cadillac CTS.
I really didn't know how to address him when he showed up. "Hello Romeo" felt awkward, as did "Hello Mr. Love". I settled on Romeo. He had just moved back to Grand Rapids after being in, where else, LA for 12 years. Romeo told me that they never made a Californian out of him, which meant I think that his friends wanted him to "chill out" a little more.
"What type of work did you do in LA?" I asked at one point in the test. "Work?" he responded, and it was really just like that, "Work???". "I'm on that Social Security". I'm guessing that Romeo can act his old self back here in Michigan because I was told later that he tried to get the phone number of one of our young secretaries when he came in to make his appointment.
Romeo did fine on his test. I then had a series of average, boring people with average, boring names. But I got to go home to a woman whose maiden name was Johnson, and she has made my life exciting every day since I met her.
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