By Bertha A. Joslin
When I was still living in MA my ex-wife and I looked at a house in the town of Webster. It was a beautiful old victorian house - stone porch, formal living room, billiards room with smoking porch, third floor servant's quarters, slate roof, carriage house. Really nice, and really cheap because the Elk's had owned it for years and rendered it senseless.
I would have loved to have owned it and fixed it up, but it would have killed me - it would have been an 1.5 hour commute (each way) and I still thought about it.
There is a lake in Webster called 'Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagunga
Evolution By Bertha A. Joslin is a poem about it written when the MA legislature wanted to simplify the name:
Excerpt:
"Touch not a g!" No impious hand
Shall wrest one from that noble name
Fifteen in all their glory stand
And ever shall the same.
For never shall that number down,
Tho Gogg and Magogg shout and thunder;
Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagunga
Shall blaze, the beacon of the town,
While nations gaze and wonder.
