Poetic License Plate Project Passes Test

The “och tamale” and the “gazump deyump” were a good start, but the University of Redlands found its real salvation on the back of a 1980 Buick.

An Arcadia man is scheduled today to deliver a California license plate that reads “YAHOO” to the university. The plate’s arrival spells the end of a 12-year odyssey of sorts at the Inland Empire campus. University administrators now own--and they insist they are proud of this--license plates containing every word of the first line of the school fight song.

That might not be saying much if the song began, say, “Fight on for ol’ SC” or “Hail to the victors.” But it’s a big deal in Redlands, where, in 1920, a student penned a cheer that began with these hallowed words: “Och tamale gazolly gazump deyump deyatty yahoo.”

First known as the “Psalm of Collegiate Thanksgiving,” the chant has become the university’s de facto fight song and is heard today at football games, pep rallies and alumni functions.

The license plate game began about 1990 when university President James R. Appleton arrived on campus one day with a plate reading “OCTAMLE.” A vice president followed suit with “GAZOLLY.”

Everything was progressing nicely--turns out “GAZUMP” was never in high demand at the Department of Motor Vehicles--until it came time to secure “YAHOO.”

That word had been taken for a license plate more than 25 years ago, when Arcadia resident John Martin ordered it for his ’65 Mustang. Even before it was delivered to Martin, the plate had become famous--for a license plate.

The state featured it, Martin said, on a television commercial advertising California’s shift in 1974 from black-and-yellow plates to blue-and-gold plates (Lawrence Welk’s “A1ANDA2” was also featured on the commercial).

“That car was one of the classics. It had horseshoes on the bumper. So I figured I might as well go Western,” said Martin, an 84-year-old retiree who still fancies cowboy boots and bolo ties. “That’s how the ‘YAHOO’ got started. It was a Western motif.”

And it remained that way for years, even after executives from Yahoo!--the Internet company, not the fight song, nor the cowboy exhortation--came calling for the plate in recent years.

Martin preferred to keep the plates, which by then he had moved to his Buick Riviera.

Finally, this spring, after university administrators tracked Martin down through contacts at the Redlands Police Department, he agreed that it was time to pass it on.

The DMV allows vehicle owners to transfer a plate to another owner, who must apply for it. License plates can also be sold along with their cars, though they cannot legally be sold on their own.

Martin and his wife of 60 years, Jeanie, have ordered new plates that will read “JOHN65,” and will pass “YAHOO” over to Redlands Dean of Students Char Burgess, who will carry the plates on her Buick Regal.

In the university’s administration building, it is seen as the end of an era.

“We all call our cars by their ‘Och Tamale’ name,” said Linda Granell, the school’s director of public relations, whose car carries “DEYUMP” plates. “We’ll say, ‘Gazolly is going into the shop.’ I don’t know where we are going to go from here.”

They could just proceed to the second line of the song--which reads, by the way, as follows: “Ink Damink Deyatty Gazink.... “