♪ ♫ next stop, Chi-town, Lido put the money down

 

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Bragg Sues Jim Jordan in Move to Block Interference in Trump Case

NYT

        The word lido has kind of puzzled me for decades... (What is a lido?  Is it someone's name? - Lido?)

When I was in high school, in a town near ours was a nightclub called The Lido.  I was never in it.  I had heard the name.  It sounded glamorous and kind of sketchy at the same time.

And if you watch episodes of The Love Boat on You Tube, you will hear them refer to "the Lido Deck."  (The various decks have names.)

And the Boz Scaggs song, "Lido Shuffle," - YAY!  (Listen to it on You Tube.)

So I finally asked Google what does lido  mean -- in Italian it means "shore" or "bank".  (Not a bank where you deposit money, but rather the 'bank' of a river.)

        The Italian root derives from litus, the Latin word for "shore."

I remember at some point in time, maybe when I was still in high school, or maybe a couple years later, a classmate told me The Lido had burned down.

        "Oh, that's too bad."

        Yeah, I heard it was a friction fire," he replied.

        I asked him what that is, and he said, "Haven't you heard of a friction fire?  The mortgage was rubbing against the insurance policy."

I never heard that expression -- friction fire -- before or since.  I don't know that I even knew what insurance fraud was -- I hadn't yet watched enough episodes of Law & Order or Murder, She Wrote.

It seemed funny, to me -- that someone from our little school in our little town would talk so -- gangster-y -- as if he knew all about such shady characters and their below-board activities.  Like he was wise to the wise guys.

And, I guess we know how rumors go -- it's much more intriguing to say it was "a friction fire" than to admit it was an accident -- faulty wiring or something....

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