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How To Talk Rhode Island

To talk Rhode Island requires more than a passing knowledge of the expression ‘No school Fosta Glosta’ or the difference between a cherrystone and a littleneck.

It’s a hybrid of Northern and Southern New England English, a Boston-meets-Brooklyn sound with a dash of Italian and Portuguese slang mixed in.

Some say you can talk Rhode Island by using a Boston accent mixed with Italian slang. Not quite. ‘Cot’ and ‘caught’ are not pronounced the same way in Rhode Island as in the rest of Eastern New England.

Rhode Islanders, like many New Englanders, do tend to drop their Rs – and then add them to the end of words, such as ‘bananner.’ And like Bostonians they use the same word for a political fundraiser: a ‘time.’

To talk Rhode Island, pronounce it ‘Va-DI-len’

How To Talk Rhode Island

Thom Jones, voice coach at Brown University/Trinity Rep Consortium, says Rhode Islanders’ broad A is less pronounced than in Boston. Rhode Islanders say ‘Pawk the caw,’ whereas Bostonians say ‘Pahk the cah.’ In Boston you ride a hahs, but in Providence, you ride a hawse.

To talk Rhode Island, pronounce the ‘er’ at the end of a word as an ‘eh,’ says audiobooks narrator Matt Haynes. Rhode Islanders drink from a bubbleh. The klenzehs, or cleansers, is the local dry cleaner.

Like the other New England accents, the Rhode Island accent started with the English colonists who first arrived in North America. They brought with them speech patterns from Elizabethan London and rural speech from Yorkshire and Lancashire. In Rhode Island, Italian, Irish and Portuguese immigrants contributed their own pronunciations.

After they arrived, immigrants to Rhode Island learned to look down on Swamp Yankees, or Swampehs. The newcomers viewed swampehs as uneducated rural folk, stubborn, old-fashioned and frugal. Swampehs take only mild offense at their nickname.

Va-Dilen

To talk Rhode Island Italian-American-style, add a V where a V doesn’t belong. ‘Va-DI-len’ is the way to pronounce the name of the state. Antnee, Bvenda, Richit, Shevl are names of children in Italian-American neighborhoods like North Providence and Cranston.

Haynes notes Rhode Islanders turn ‘am’ into ‘e-am’ and ‘an’ into ‘e-an.’ That’s how Cranston, which is about 33 percent Italian-American, comes to be pronounced Cveaanstin. You might drive a Camavo in Cveaanstin.

A Jaguah is more likely to be driven in South County, which is really Washington and Kent counties. South County was so nicknamed during the American Revolution because it sounded better than its real name, King’s County.

You may go to a casino in Rhode Island, but don’t expect to gamble. The U.S. government recognizes the Newport Casino as a National Historic Landmark.The word comes from the Italian, ‘casina,’ which means little house. The big house, the Adult Correctional Institute, is known as the ACI and is located in Cveeanstin, which is north of Wa-wick.

Newport Casino, 1900, where you can talk Rhode Island

Cuisine

To talk Rhode Island, you have to know the nicknames for the state’s cuisine.

If you ask for gravy in Cveaanstin, you will get a red tomato sauce for your paster.

A cabinet is a milkshake, unless it’s an Awful Awful.

Hot dogs and clams inspire especially vivid nicknames.

New York System wieners

A New York system wiener, unknown in New York, consists of a 4-inch pork, beef and veal wiener in a steamed bun with yellow mustard, onions, celery salt and a ground beef sauce. It’s also known as a gagga, a bellybuster, a destroyer or a hot wiener. You might eat it with coffee milk and an order of beef stew – French fries loaded with ketchup and salt.

A saugy is a hot dog with a natural casing that snaps when cut. The Saugy Company has made them since 1869.

Rhode Island’s Portuguese people contributed chorizo or chourico (pronounced shuh-reese), a small, dense, spicy sausage to the state’s cuisine. If you don’t like too much spice, order linguica (leen-gwee-sa) instead.

The strawberry Awful Awful

A stuffie is a stuffed clam, or quahog, harvested with a bullrake. In western Rhode Island, quahog is pronounced kwa-hog; in eastern Rhode Island it’s ko-hog.

A cherrystone is a quahog slightly larger and juicier than a littleneck, which is the smallest clam legal to harvest.

A grinder is another word for a sangwidge, which is a ‘torpedo’ in the Pawtuxet Valley and a ‘dynamite’ in Woonsocket.

Woonsocketisms

Many Franco-American mill workers used to live in Woonsocket, where they developed their own much-made-fun-of patois.

Today it’s a standing, if inaccurate, joke about how they talk in Woonsocket. “Side by each” is the classic example. “Shut the light” is another.

“Puffcorn” is a Woonsocketism for popcorn.

Salty Brine

Other Woonsocketisms include misplaced phrases, such as “throw me down the stairs my hat” and the double pronoun, such as “I’m going to the klenzehs, me.”

For those who didn’t grow up in Rhode Island, “No school Fosta-Glosta” was a catchphrase of radio host Salty Brine. Children eagerly listened to him list school closings on snow days, and Salty Brine lumped Foster and Glocester side by each as “No school, Fosta-Glosta.”

With special thanks to Quahog.org.

Images: Rhode Island sign, By Morrow Long – Pachaug Trail – “Welcome to Rhode Island sign” at Beach Pond, Hope Valley, RI, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16138014.

This story about How To Talk Rhode Island was updated in 2022.

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The Return of ZaRex

Generations of New Englanders grew up on ZaRex, a sweet fruity syrup they could make into a drink, into snow cones or as a secret ingredient in cupcakes.

It was a retro regional favorite, much like the Fluffernutter sandwich, Moxie, New York System Wieners or the Fall River Chow Mein sandwich.

ZaRex was sold on opening day at Fenway Park, and Babe Ruth was said to have eaten it on snow cones. Stephen King mentions Zarex in several stories and likely drank it as a kid.

By the 1980s the drink was losing popularity and then-owner One Pie Canning Co. halted production in 2008.

ZaRex came back, but only for a little while.

ZaRex History

An ad from the 1920s

ZaRex was first made in 1912 by Za-Rex Food Products Inc., in Boston’s South End. Soon it had imitators.

In July 1923, a ZaRex display ad read:

WARNING

To All Who Are Thirsty!

In an attempt to trade upon the great popularity of “ZA-REX” as the purest, most delicious and convenient of Fruit Drinks, a number of Cheap, inferior products — “Fruit Syrups,” so called — have been thrown upon the market and are frequently being substituted for genuine “ZA-REX” even when “ZA-REX” is called by name.

One of those imitators was a liquid concentrate called Fruit Smack. In 1927, its inventor, Edwin Perkins of Hastings, Neb., found a way to remove the liquid, leaving a powder that cost less to ship. He renamed it Kool-Aid in 1931.

An early ZaRex ad.

By then, a new ZaRex plant pumped out sweet syrup in South Boston. The factory officially opened on April 1, 1924, with 100 members of the New England Association of Manufacturers on hand to watch production of the sweet syrup.

The visitors had an interest in the tremendous growth of the soft drink industry since the advent of Prohibition, reported the Boston Globe. The four-story plant was completely devoted to making ZaRex from fruit juice infused with sugar.

“There is no human contact with the product,” marveled the Globe.

Quick and Thrifty

ZaRex still had strong sales in July 1952. Nancy Norton, writing “For the Pantry Shelf” in the Boston Globe, recommended it: “There’s more for your money in the tastiest treat in town … Za-Rex, the full pint that makes a full gallon of tall, cool drinks. Easy to make, quick and thrifty. Just a dash of Za-Rex, add water and ice.”

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, newspaper ads and television commercials marketed ZaRex. One jingle went, “It’s as good as can be, just look for the Z.” On the In The 70s blog, ‘Patrick’ posted his memory of appearing in a ZaRex ad. His father worked in advertising in Boston, and use his children in commercials. Remembered Patrick:

When I was in Kindergarten (1972 I think) I was cast in a TV commercial for Zarex. I must have drank 10 gallons of the stuff. By the time we finished I could barely muster a smile for the camera.

In 2010, Arthur Dove went to the grocery store on the South Shore of Massachusetts to buy ZaRex. To his great dismay, he couldn’t find it. Dove had been brought up on the drink, and had given it to his children and grandchildren.

Zippy Returns

He called the manufacturer, One Pie, and learned the company stopped making ZaRex because it wanted to concentrate on its canning business – not because of declining sales.

“Then out of the blue, I asked if he’d be willing to sell it,” Dove told the Boston Herald. He answered ‘yes.’

Dove and his colleague in the ambulance sales and maintenance business, Joe Croce, bought the rights and recipe for ZaRex syrup in 2010. They also brought back the drink’s mascot, Zippy the Zebra. Now they make ZaRex — Fruit Punch, Grape, Lime-Lime, Raspberry and Sugar Free Raspberry — in Lakeville, Mass.

Memories

A 2012 story about the return of ZaRex in Mass. Market inspired a flood of nostalgic comments:

Marti Moore wrote, “Love Zarex….I make Rasbery Lime Rickeys ….add vodka even better…thanks Sonny for bringing it back.”

Sherry Herron: My grandfather (my Zadie) used to always have Zarex at my grandparents house. When he was at the Brockton VA hospital losing his battle with cancer (17 years ago) he asked my Mom and I to get him Zarex, that was what he wanted. We were lucky enough that they had it on a dusty shelf at a convenience store local to the hospital. I hated seeing him in that condition, but he loved that cup of Zarex punch!

Mr. Y: I drank quite a bit of Zarex back in the blizzard of ’78, making snowcones in all the mounds of snow around my house with my brothers and sisters. As nutritionally devoid a product as it is, I’d love to pass down that memory to my own daughter.

Lynn Briggs: I love Zarex, grew up with it at the beach and birthday parties, cookouts, you name it.
Before CoolAid was cool.

And then in 2013, Boston’s late mayor Tom Menino posed with Zippy the Zebra in the Bunker Hill parade in Charlestown.

Sadly for ZaRex lovers, production ceased by 2019.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Rhode Island Food Lore: The New York System Wiener

In the annals of Rhode Island food traditions, the New York System wiener is probably the most misleading.

New Yorkers know nothing about it.

A New York System wiener

It’s a four-inch pork, beef and veal wiener (never hot dog) in a steamed bun with yellow mustard, onions, celery salt and a ground beef sauce (never ketchup). People usually order them in multiples and wash them down with another Rhode Island food tradition — a tall glass of coffee milk.

New York System

The name New York System emerged in the 1900s when hot dogs, er wieners, were still new. They were associated with Coney Island in New York City, and ‘New York System’ was used as a marketing term to denote authenticity. They’re also known as hot wieners, weenies, gaggers and belly busters.

By 1940, ‘New York System’ described a distinct style of preparation that evolved in Providence’s Greek community.

New York City wiener vendor

A distinct method of presentation also evolved – ‘on the arm.’ Short-order cooks would line an outstretched arm with buns, then with their free hand add the wieners, mustard, meat sauce, onions, salt in rapid succession.

One of the quintessential New York System wiener shops is in the Olneyville neighborhood of Providence. In 2014, the James Beard Foundation awarded the Olneyville New York System its American Classics medal. The Beard Foundation explained the medal goes to regional establishments, often family-owned, “treasured for their quality food, local character, and lasting appeal.”

It was opened in 1946 by Nick Stavrianakos and his son Anthony. They came from Brooklyn, N.Y., where they ran a small candy store. They originally immigrated from Greece in the 1920s. A fourth generation now runs it and a sister restaurant in Cranston. According to the Beard Foundation,

Olneyville was once the favored lunch spot of workers employed by local jewelry manufacturers. Now, nearly 70 years later, “the System” has become a multigenerational family spot, the late night haunt of college students, and the first stop from the airport for returning natives.

A Century of Gaggers

Olneyville wasn’t the first. The Original New York System shop in the Smith Hill neighborhood dates to 1927, and many believe it served the first hot wiener in Providence. Sparky’s Coney Island System of East Providence claims to have been founded in 1915. Sparky’s, though, has closed.

Baba’s Original New York System, Smith Street, Providence

Other vendors include Baba’s in Providence, E.P. Wiener in East Providence and Wien-O-Rama in Cranston.

Purists prefer New York System wieners with natural casings that link them together in a rope. Cooks have to cut them apart before serving them. Another variety of the hot wiener — the skinless — has no casing at all

Casing or no casing, the New York System wiener always comes in a steamed bun made by the Homestead Baking Co. in East Providence. They have a slightly sweeter flavor than most hot dog buns. They also have only four ingredients: sugar, yeast, water and flour strong enough to withstand heavy steaming.

As for the coffee milk, food historians say it’s the product of thrifty diner owners. During the Great Depression, they strained water and sugar through used coffee grounds and then mixed it with milk. Rhode Island made it the official state beverage.

Images: Wiener by Diannotti – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60236459. Baba’s Original New York System Restaurant by Kenneth C. Zirkel – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=92319917. This story was updated in 2022.

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