Tuesday, July 16, 2019

Istanbul, not Constantinople

We were out walking Dilly early on this hot and humid day.  We passed a car parked across the street. It had an odd sticker in the rear window. It said, "Make Istanbul Constantinople Again."

Right away a fragment from an old song from the 40's began playing in my head. I asked my husband about it. He remembered it, too.  Here's all I remember from that song:

It's Istanbul, not Constantinople,
Istanbul, not Constantinople,
It's Istanbul, not Constantinople,
Why did "Constantinople" get the works?
That's nobody's business but the Turks.

A little later, more lines surfaced from the old memory fishing bank:

Even Old New York
Was once New Amsterdam.
Why they changed it
I can't say,
Maybe they just liked it better that way.

6 comments:

  1. Forsythia:

    I am so glad you are posting again! I missed your writings!!! I bet the deer have some way to get elsewhere when needed.

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  2. Oh... and... Constantinople is a much cooler sounding name! :)

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  3. So when you have it all gathered up again, will you post a YouTube link?

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  4. They Might Be Giants did a cover version. Sometime in the '90s. That's the one I know. But I believe it was from one of the Road To... movies with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby.

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  5. I didn't know that song …

    All the best Jan

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