The Circus/Carny use of the Cally-ope pronunciation probably came into
use after the Air-Callio became such a popular carnival fixture.  Not
certain, just a deduction from some comments that I heard years ago,
right after WW2 when I worked my way through high school working the
fairs around southern Michigan.  I operated a "mug joint" and would
always try to get a lot as near to the "gennie" as I could.

It was always fun to talk to the 'bouts [roustabouts] and listen to the
stories they would tell.  I never knew whether to believe them or not,
but they were interesting at the time to a teenager that I was then.


For the people interested in pronunciation of various words Mikado is
normally pronounced as mi KAH do -- however, in Michigan the town of
Mikado is pronounced mi KAY do and on the railroad we used to have
steam locomotives that were Mikados and they were pronounced MIKE a doo
or just MIKEs for short.

If you go down south the word Lever is often pronounced LEE ver which
I think is pretty CLEEver of those folks.

Hal Davis