America, One Moment at a Time — #21

~ MMC 2.0

Lynn, Lynn… The City of Sin?

When we came to Lynn, I knew very little about the place.

Then I heard its old rhyme:

“Lynn, Lynn, the city of sin,
You never come out the way you went in.
Ask for water, they give you gin —
It’s the darndest city I’ve ever been in.” 😄

Not exactly a tourism slogan!

But then, on a walk near our apartment, I found this:

“Shoe Capital of the World.”

Shoes?

In Lynn?

Apparently, Lynn was once a major centre of shoemaking, with thousands of skilled workers.

And there was Jan Ernst Matzeliger, whose invention helped transform shoe manufacturing.

Then I looked around.

The waterfront.
The boats.
The gardens.
People enjoying a quiet day.

The Lynn I was discovering was certainly more than the Lynn of that old rhyme. 😄

Perhaps that’s the trouble with reputations.

They tell us a story.

Not necessarily the whole story.

Every place has a past.
Every place has a reputation.
And every place has another story waiting to be discovered.

So perhaps Lynn has taught me one thing.

Dont judge a place by its rhyme. 😄

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Published by MMC 2.0

Mohan Mathew Chacko is a multi-disciplinary freelance writer and one who runs the WORDSOUPS blog as if it’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened in the storytelling blogging world. From the time when he survived a near-death situation on a surgeon’s table, he considers this his second life and believes he is now a better version of his previous self. Nowadays he likes to be known as MMC 2.0 though no one else seems to care.

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