Jimmie's Sprinkles

If I had an ice cream stand I’d call it Jimmie’s Sprinkles.

At least that’s what I’d like to call it, but in a town that depends so much on the tourist dollar that may not be a good idea. Customers, from other parts of the country, might not get the joke.

Do you?

I love language, and part of what I like about it is the confusion it creates.
At Jimmie’s Sprinkles I’d have Frappes, Milk Shakes, and Cabinets one after the other on the same menu – and at the same price.

Frappes are what we here in Plymouth are supposed to call that frosty blend of a few scoops of ice cream, milk, and flavored syrup.
Much of the rest of the country however calls that same concoction a Milk Shake. In Rhode Island the same drink is called a Cabinet.
Then again, many locals are not really local, and they use an American dialect I like to call McDonaldese. If you speak McDonaldese skip the rest of this column and go directly to the second window.

Even if you’re not from these ‘parts’ I strongly advise you to adopt the local lingo. Taking the time to understand out local ways can save you a lot of grief.

My friend Dan bought his first house in Plymouth because of his confusion about the term ‘deeded beach rights’. His tiny gambrel with ten hardy shrubs and 1000 square feet of sod was located way off in the woods on the western side of Route 3, down some dirt road, but he was sure there was a path back behind his new home that led directly to the ocean.
A few weeks later Dan discovered he had the right to swim in a nearby cranberry bog.

Musty is a great local word: people tell you they have musty basements. My first house had deeded beach rights to my neighbor’s musty basement. He was pretty good about it too. Whenever the temperature got above 80 he’d open up his bulkhead door and stock the thing with brown trout.

Visitors to Plymouth are often amused at the names of our Ponds.
First off they’re amused that we call just about everything that isn’t saltwater, a pond. Water in the basement, as I said, qualifies as a pond. Goldfish Ponds are ponds. Inflatable pools larger than 8 feet across are often referred to as ‘personal’ ponds.
But most of all they are amused at the names, as I said. They assume that the locals are a bunch of simple-minded folk who just couldn’t think of anything better than ‘Long Pond’, ‘Round Pond’, ‘Square Pond’ and such.
Where they’re from there is very little water, except in the man-made lakes and golf course waterfalls created by developers. Leave the naming to developers and you end up with hundreds of names like Sunset Lake, Sunrise Lake, Postcard Lake, Watercolor Lake and the Lake, I mean like.
For some reason developers don’t like to call anything a pond...

But Plymouth ponds were named long ago, by practical men who were often lost in the woods, scared of the natives, and eager to get the heck back to their musty shacks and do a little preventive thatching.
So these individuals named the ponds for practical reasons: mainly for ease of navigation, but also so as to remember just what the pond was like so they wouldn’t have to go back for a second look.

It was those common-sensical pioneers who gave us Muddy Pond, Shallow Pond, Ugly Pond, and Not Another Pond.
They also came up with Bloody Pond, Freakin Pond, One More Pond, and Once-a-Pond-a-Pond.
There are over 7000 ponds in Plymouth and mysteriously, around 1693 they stopped naming, with 1103 ponds still to go.

“Perchance I beholdeth one more freakith pond”, Isaac Hummarock declared that year in his diary, “likely I goeth out of my freakith gourd”.

Ah yes, those were the days: when there were a half dozen ponds for every resident of Plymouth. Now the population has increased to the point where we have to share our ponds with seven or eight strangers, many of whom think they’re swimming in Cape Cod Bay.
It’s pitiful.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.
If we all do our part, embrace our local lingo and customs, we can develop a sense of community and cooperation, and then finish the job.

At Jimmie’s Sprinkles we’ll offer a free booklet on local language and customs to anyone who wonders out loud what the difference is between a Cabinet and a Frappe, or between a Frappe and a Milk Shake, or between New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
And to anyone who spends more than $30 on any non-sale item, we’ll give them a map to the location of those 1103 anonymous ponds, together with a list of suggested names.
It won’t change the world, but if we work together at least there won’t be more poor souls like Dan, wandering the mosquito-infested woods looking for the perfect wave.