Saturday, May 17, 2008
Dad's "singing"
Dad couldn't carry a tune in a wheelbarrow. And, he didn't sing much. He'd sing in church, all right, and if you were next to him, you kind of had to ignore what he was doing and concentrate on getting your own notes right. But there were two songs that I remember him singing to us as kids. One was called "The Preacher and the Bear," about a preacher who went hunting on Sunday and got into a lot of trouble because of it. I think that this song appealed to his sense of humor, which tended towards puns and word play a lot. The song that I remember, though, was "The Wabash Cannonball," an old railroading song. I have no idea why Dad liked this song. Maybe it was the rhythm, "Listen to the jingle, the rumble and the roar...."Whatever, I really liked it, and I never hear it but I think of Dad singing it to me.
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I don't think Dad ever sang the verses to The Preacher and the Bear, but he'd sing the chorus:
“Oh, Lordy, you delivered Daniel from the lion’s den.
Also delivered Jonah from the belly of the whale and then
Three Hebrew children from the fiery furnace,
The good books do declare.
Now, Lord, Lordy, Lord, if you can’t help me,
For sakes, don’t help that bear.”
He also would recite a jingle--usually when we were traveling:
Not a town, and not a city
It's just a little place
Called Didewa Ditty.
By the way, on a trip of any length in the summertime, we usually drove through the night, as it was cooler.There was no such thing as air conditioning in cars when we were young. I was 18 when I saw my first car with air conditioning. But back to traveling--Ron and I would sleep in the back seat.
And wasn't Dad the one who taught is "Mairzy Dotes"? I seem to remember that he loved little songs that had word play in them. Of the jokes that I remember he told, all were word-play jokes.
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