The Hartford Courant and state historian Walt Woodward crafted a bit of a controversy or intellectual puzzle or recreational diversion a few weeks back with a query about what Connecticut residents should be called.
The dimly popular “Nutmegger” thing has an unpleasant history that borders on business fraud and is puzzling to foreigners who wonder why Connectucukians want to be ground up and sprinkled on eggnog. Walt Woodward votes for “Connecticans,” but that’s why he’s the state historian and not the state poet laureate.
As is often the case, Cohen the Columnist must ride to the rescue and offer up a solution so sensible that questions arise as to why he is not state historian or poet laureate or Ambassador to the Vatican or editor and publisher of a weekly business publication.
We should dream big; we should be dubbed with a label that represents our dreams, our aspirations, our vision.
We should probably call ourselves “New Hampshirites.” Think about it. Over night, we would become craggy and, thus, wise looking — with no state income tax, no sales tax, and, of course, cheap liquor. Live Free or Die.
We could choose to be labeled “Floridians,” which would provide us with a year-round tan, no state income tax, wine in grocery stores — and the ability to launch referenda campaigns that put the fear of God into legislators.
Similarly, if we were to become Texans, we would have no personal income tax and our capital city would be very cool — with a great, big premier, state research university located there, instead of on a dairy farm in the northeast corner of the state.
To get a bit more aggressive, we could look to Tennessee, the “Volunteers,” which also has no income tax. Simple enough. We move our state capital to Voluntown, rename ourselves in some sort of volunteer-like way, and no longer fear the threat of “taxing the millionaires.”
We don’t have to worry our pretty little heads about accuracy or anything like that. Consider our neighboring Rhode Islanders, who don’t even live on an island. Nobody quarrels with them about it. We could negotiate with Fairfield County’s ritzy New Canaan to change its name us a bit to “Cayman,” move the state Capitol there — then call ourselves “Cayman Islanders” and invite even more rich people to move here because we wouldn’t have taxes any more.
Some options might not really work, of course. We aren’t blond enough or Scandinavian enough or Lutheran enough to get away with being South Dakotan or North Dakotan or Minnesotan. On the other hand, Connecticut is so business-unfriendly that we have population growth on the order of North Dakota, which is cold and isolated and buffalo-ridden. We might get away with being North Dakotan.
We could, of course, engage in some labeling imperialism and simply call ourselves “New Englanders.” Consider the geographic confusion of our citizenry. Those folks in Fairfield County already think that they live in New York — and the residents of Litchfield County wander around Massachusetts and New York and Connecticut, never knowing where the heck they actually are. Who would miss the Connecticut thing?
Amazingly, these little geographic nicknames make no effort to be marketing tools. Iowans are Iowans, whether Iowa is Hell on Earth or the Garden of Eden.
A clever option for Connecticut would be to festoon its highways and byways with billboards featuring alluring photos of Cohen the Columnist. We could then be the “Connecticuteians.” Very cute, indeed.
Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.
