COLUMBUS DISCOVERS . . . CACKALACKY

Not too long ago we visited the children in our sister state of North Carolina. My eyes caught a tee-shirt referring to North Carolina as “North Cackalaky.” Odd, I thought, but not odd enough to trace its origin.

A few weeks later while strolling down Main Street of our hometown, Greenville, South Carolina, I beheld another tee-shirt calling South Carolina, “South Cackalacky.” Now my curiosity could not be restrained.

I searched the internet only to find that no one really knew what “cackalacky” meant. There are over 200 definitions, ranging from an Indian word, to the corruption of the name “Carolina” by local mountain people, to the sound of a chicken coop.

I even discovered a website, www.cakalacky.com, which I assumed held definitive authority of the word’s meaning. Their “Cackalacky,” though, is a spicy pepper condiment manufactured in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

I contacted the president of Cackalacky, who turned out to be a landsman Yehudi. But, before I could say a word, he shouted with great surprise, “You aren’t Marc Wilson, the columnist, are you?”

“Yes,” I answered. “How did you know?”

“I read your column in the Judische Allgemeine!”

“Well,” he said, “I have always assumed that ‘cackalcky’ was how the goyim referred to the Yiddish accent of the Jewish peddlers who sold their wares in North and South, Carolina.”

Ah, I thought, not only have the Jews discovered the polio vaccine, theory of relativity and dirigible balloon. They have also given names to two of the original American colonies, North and South, Cackalacky . . . I mean “Carolina.”

Then was Christopher Columbus, who discovered America, also a Jew? We had always heard rumors to that effect. Perhaps he loaded up his ships in 1492 with a Jewish crew to escape the Spanish Inquisition and take refuge in the New World. Perhaps he mustered his crew with the Hebrew cry, “Kacha lechu!” (“This is how we shall go!”). And so they went.

I ask you, doesn’t “kacha lechu” sound just like “cakalacky”? I’ll let you ponder that. But keep in mind: These Jews are a very strange people. So you never know. You never know.