On the front page of the Variety section of the Star Tribune of Feb. 22 there was a collection of about 40 words submitted by readers as being fun words to say. The words were supposed to be real words, but it also included some proper names that do not fit into ordinary conversation.

A local food writer, James Norton, had submitted one of the words that I have always found fun to say: Oconomowoc. They gave a hint on how to say this five syllable word: “oh-CON-oh-mo-wok.” Once a person says that name, he/she is liable to repeat it as it sort of runs off the tongue in a smooth sort of ramble.

I am not sure how long ago I first experienced the name, but it has to have gone back about 50 years when I was on one of my car trips going from Minnesota to Illinois and/or to Ohio. I had turned east at Madison, Wisconsin and heading to Milwaukee when I encountered the signs for the city, but there is also both a town of Oconomowok and a Lake Oconomowok in the same area. The name is derived from the Potawatomi reference to a waterfall, coo-no-mo-wauk.

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Of course it did not take long for my mind to conjure up many more words or “stuff” that I might have submitted to the column. None of the following actually appear in the paper.

The first word that comes to mind is mellifluous which means a smooth and gentle sound that is pleasant to listen to. Some people have mellifluous voices.

Sort of opposite of a mellifluous phrase might be the childhood tongue-twister: How much wood could a wood chuck chuck, if a wood chuck could chuck wood? The answer to that was: He’d chuck all the wood that a wood chuck could chuck if the wood chuck could chuck wood.

Some of you readers will remember: Chickory chick, cha-la, cha-la. Check-a-la romey in a bananika, bollika, wollika, can’t you see Chickory chick is me?

Also, from the Disney movie of Mary Poppins in 1964 came the, “Supercallifragilisticexpealidocious.” The song by that name was written by brothers Richard and Robert Sherman. A song written in 1949 used a word close to the Sherman’s version. Needless to say, there was a lawsuit, but the Sherman’s were able to show that there were many similar versions going back even further so they were able to maintain their authorship.

There was even a variant published in a column back in 1931 with a description, “all words in the category of something wonderful” and “though rather long and tiring before one reaches its conclusion, … once you arrive at the end, you have said in one word what it would ordinarily take four paragraphs to explain.”

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My high school alma mater is Stivers (tigers). The original building in Dayton, Ohio, is still part of the school and was built in 1908-1909 so the school is now over 100 years old and still operating.

My father attended (though did not graduate) from Stivers when he was a freshman. He dropped out of school the following year to help support the family. He became employed by the National Cash Register Company (NCR) and worked there over 50 years. Both my sister and my brother were graduated from Stivers before I came along.

Stivers was a bit unusual in that, when I attended, they allowed both boys and girls clubs that were much like one would call fraternities and sororities. There were about five clubs for each gender and pledges were announced late into the freshman year.

Each club had a faculty adviser and the clubs of about 10 upper classmen met at the homes of the members with the faculty adviser present. There were initiation rights, but none reaching the harassment levels that eventually led to such clubs’ demise some years later.

So in good time, I was invited to join The Royal Bengals. Every morning before the start of classes when we needed to be in our assigned homerooms, we pledges had to circulate and get the signatures of the regular members into a small notebook. This was not always an easy task because the building was four stories with over 1000 total students. Freshmen had homerooms on the fourth level with sophomores and juniors on the third level and seniors on the second level. The lowest level was mostly business level and shop rooms with no assigned homerooms.

As a pledge, when each of us would approach a regular member, we had a greeting that we had to recite. I cannot remember the entire greeting, but it began by saying the regular’s name and continued with, “Even though I am a sugary sweet sweetie in bookworm’s clothing and a member of Madam Slavanka’s Slovak Society, I …” This was followed by a long list of names that we were each assigned. I don’t remember all of the names, but do recall one was Obediah and another was Balthizer.

Sometimes the regular might offer us a piece of candy or something to eat and our response had to be, “I’m sufficiently suffoxified to the eloquency of my taste.” Of course neither “suffoxified” nor “eloquency” can be found in any dictionary.

The worst ritual was that on our final pledge night, we were each required to suck out a raw egg from an egg whose ends had been pricked open by pins. The requirement allowed us to spit it out, not swallow it!

Until next time: Oh, Fiddlesticks!