A Pony Keg is a Convenience Store in Cincinatti

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Jackie, and I’m calling from Chesapeake, Virginia.

Hi, Jackie. Welcome to the show.

When I was growing up in Cincinnati, we had a little store on the corner of our street that I would walk to all the time and buy pop and candy or whatever.

And we always called it a pony keg.

And there were other ones like around in the neighborhood and everything.

They aren’t there anymore, but I haven’t heard that term in a long time.

And I’ve kind of figured out that I think that it’s just like a local thing, the term pony keg.

But I’m just kind of curious if that’s true and what it, like, originated from and kind of what you guys know about that term.

Oh, Jackie, this is wonderful.

You know, if Grant and I were having a conversation with you and trying to figure out where you were from, and we had a suspicion that maybe you were from Cincinnati, we would listen for you to say, please, instead of, excuse me.

Do you do that as well?

Yeah.

I do.

And then I suspect that Grant and I might steer the conversation to what do you call a local convenience store or something, try to get you to just talk about where you would pick up.

What did you say?

You said you would go to the pony keg to pick up what again?

I did say pop.

I actually don’t say pop anymore normally because since I’ve moved to Virginia, I’ve been here like eight years now.

And when we moved, I stopped saying pop because I felt like weird saying it when I’d order one.

I do say soda.

But sometimes now when I’m home with my family who still lives in Cincinnati, if I say soda now, I feel weird because they don’t say soda.

So it’s like, which word do I use?

They don’t.

So you certainly don’t say pony keg there in Virginia, right?

Right.

Right.

So pony keg meant or still means in Cincinnati a convenience store.

And Martha, as far as we know, nowhere else.

Yes.

Isn’t that interesting?

If you look at the Dictionary of American Regional English, for example, the first entry in there talks about in 1971, they gathered some information about the Yellow Pages in Cincinnati.

And it says that under beer, between the letters from F to M alone, there were 41 establishments that had the term pony keg in it, like the Glenway pony keg and Kenwood Corner Delicatessen and pony keg.

Yeah, it seems to be very, very specific to Cincinnati.

And the term pony keg, as I’m sure you know, refers to a small keg of beer.

It’s smaller than the normal size, just like a pony is smaller than a normal-sized horse.

But why is it particular to Cincinnati?

I don’t think we know.

There’s a guess we can make.

And if you look in old newspapers, kind of following that yellow pages path backward, and you look in the classifieds back as far as the 1940s, you will find, for example, lots of land being sold.

And people will say things like perfect for a pony keg stand or perfect for a pony keg station or pony keg dispensary.

And also you’ll find them selling pony keg licenses.

So there was a particular kind of license that you could get that allowed you to sell pony kegs, you know, these smaller kegs of beer of varying sizes.

And I think that was a kind of Cincinnati specific kind of license.

And it became a kind of business that you can run without a lot of investment.

You had a plot of land, you sold pony kegs, and that was your business.

And so it became shortened over time, the stand and the station and the dispensary dropped off, and the short version was pony keg.

And, of course, the beer was there first, and then the things that go with beer, like all the other convenience store stuff like chips and lottery tickets and whatever came later.

All right.

That’s interesting.

Okay, that makes some sense.

We know it goes back as far as the 1940s.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s older than that.

So my question for you, do people still use it?

Because there’s some evidence, some people talk about it in the newspapers in Cincinnati as if it’s an older generation’s term and the younger generation doesn’t use it much.

I was talking to a friend about it who still lives in Cincinnati, and she uses the term still.

She has one that’s just down the street from her, and she calls it a pony keg.

And it’s like a drive-through, like, convenience store type one, which I think a lot of them are, but not all of them are drive-through.

It could be used for other types, too.

So, I mean, I think it is still used from time to time, at least.

Cincinnati only, as far as we can tell.

Not even other cities in Ohio call it a pony keg.

Just Cincinnati.

So funny.

Yeah, thank you so much.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

You too.

Bye.

Well, maybe you moved across the country and you were using a word and you realized nobody else is using this word.

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