>>>>> kids' parents in my neighborhood saying "He's going to go by Johnny's" meaning "go to"
>>>>
>>>>Grandma, is that you?
>>>
>>><g> Sound familiar? I never heard anyone say that after I left the old neighborhood, but in Cleveland in the 50s it was so common that changing that pattern was a really priority in English class, since many of the kids had picked it up from parents.
>>>
>>
>>Yeah, along with "Frigidaire" instead of refridgerator and "Fords" instead of "Ford" (not sure how much of that was a Detroit thing vs a Polish thing).
>
>My grandparents called it "the ice-box:" until the day they died <s> "pocket-book", "house-coat", "charge-a-plate" are pretty much out of usage now. We were more English than the queen but even my mother always referred to a head-scarf as a "babushka".
>
>My grandfather always referred to a car as "the machine" ( he saw his first one when he was 20 years old ).

What is charge-a-plate?