I am getting a book about President Calvin Coolidge ready for the collection, and ran across a phrase in it that had me totally stumped. It was "cab shop." When I checked the printed copy of the book, the phrase is correct. It's not a scanno, but I had no idea what it meant in the context in which it was used. The sentences around it didn't help either. The actual words are: the lesser activity of the village was a cab shop. I worked there some on Saturdays, so I came to know how toys and baby wagons were made. " That left me puzzled. What do toys and baby wagons have to do with something called a cab shop?
I finally found out it means! It's a little bit of Vermont regional language from President Coolidge's time, from before the 1930s. Toy baby buggies, the little toy strollers a young girl would play with to push her doll around, were called baby cabs. At that time a business that made baby buggies was then called a cab shop.
So thanks to volunteering I learned a neat little snippet of Vermont history and regional vocabulary today. smile.
Judy s.
