Vo Dilun is the name given to Rhode Island by long time Providence Phoenix hipster columnists Phillipe and Jorge. Alas, the Providence Phoenix is no longer with us, but to my husband and me, Vo Dilun is now the indelible name of his home state, courtesy of P and J.
I moved to Rhode Island of my own free will many moons ago when I was out of college and seeking to flee my own state of Virginia which had come to bore me. A good friend with a similar inclination to live someplace new and different convinced me to move with her to Rhode Island, Newport, specifically, where her sister lived.
For some reason, I have always considered New England to be my spiritual home. My father was a career military officer and we ricocheted around the country, living primarily on both coasts in 2 and 3 year blocks of time. At one point we lived in Boston for three years, one summer of which was spent in Marblehead, Mass. We lived in an old shingled house at the top of a hill surrounded by lilac bushes. It was bucolic.
I read Louisa May Alcott books and fancied myself as another March sister. I experimentally called my mother Marmee a couple of times, which not surprisingly did not take. My mother said "Good God, stop calling me that atrocious name" when I tentatively parlayed it. "Get your head out of your books and go outside and live in the real world."
After we left Massachusetts for Southern California and North Carolina and back to Virginia, I always felt that my heart really belonged in the region of the country with snow and funny accents and whaling boats and seaports and I knew that someday I would return. So the idea of moving to Newport Rhode Island fell on fertile ground.
My first morning in Rhode Island found me eating breakfast at the counter of The Newport Creamery, a small statewide chain of diners. I asked for coffee to start and the waitress responded "Reglah?"
I couldn't make out what she was saying and repeated it back to her - "Reglah?" I thought it must be a local brand of coffee.
Like everyone, the waitress believed that saying the same thing over but louder would resolve any communication difficulty. I finally understood what she thought she was saying when I detected a suffocated middle syllable and said, "Oh! Reg-u-lar" back at her in perfectly enunciated mid-Atlantic. She was Eliza and I was Henry Higgins. I didn't know it at the time but this would be the first of many encounters I would have over the years decoding Rhode Islandese which challenges not only in pronunciation but in assigning novel meanings to known words.
Anyway, back to the coffee. The question had now been asked and understood.Did I want regular coffee? Must be as opposed to decaf, right? So I said "Yes, thanks, regular coffee."
A few moments later she put down in front of me a cup of very sweet, sugared coffee loaded with cream. I was befuddled and called her over and said, "Miss, this coffee has cream and sugar in it." I had hit her last nerve. "Reglah! You said you wanted reglah! Well, you got reglah."
So let it be noted, gentle traveler- in Vo Diland, the preferred coffee of the locals, sweet and light, is referred to as Reglah.
Why this nostalgia? After years of exile, Mr. Loosinhouse and I have decided to pick up and decamp once again and re-establish our his ancestral roots in his ancestral state in an ancestral house in the smallest and quirkiest state in this country. It truly is a land like no other for a number of reasons. I plan to write some more about this small and mostly overlooked state. I hope you'll join me and share your own Rhode Island stories as either an inhabitant or visitor to the state.