The other day, during yet another rainy spell, I was watching the rain gutter downspouts spill water into a flower bed and thought about rain barrels. I went on Amazon and, sure enough, they had rain barrels. I ordered one and it came two days later. It is now installed and works great. The mention of rain barrels reminded me of a nursery song my mother used to sing to me on Tuesdays, which was her ironing day. One went like this: Playmate, come out and play with me, and bring your dollies three, climb up my apple tree, look down my rain barrel, slide down my cellar door, and we’ll be jolly friends for evermore. Sound familiar? Do you remember the second verse?
Another song was “A bicycle Built for Two.” This all happened shortly after the end of WW2 and my mom would sing some war songs too. Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile. I think that’s how it went. There was another one about fishies. Down in the meadow in a little bitty pool swam three little fishies and a mama fishie too. “Swim,” said the mama fish, “swim if you can,” and they swam, swam, swam all over the dam. There were a number of verses but I can’t remember them. When the kids were little, they watched Captain Kangaroo in the morning and I heard the fishies song on that a few times. One song I sang to the grandkids when they were little was Mairzy Dotes and Dozy Dotes, etc. Another one was Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah.
These songs got me to thinking about sitting around bonfires years ago with friends and we always ended up singing songs. You Are My Sunshine is one I remembered. Another was She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain When She Comes. We always ended with Goodnight, Irene. Gael and I would sometimes sing hymns that we remembered from church when we were younger. Couldn’t remember all the words but would remember the melody. These songs will be stuck in my head for a while now. So if you see me somewhere humming, it probably will be one of the above.
There is one song that has been going through my head recently, and it probably has something to do with the state of the country and world. The Kingston Trio sang it in the late fifties, I think. “They’re rioting in Africa, they’re starving in Spain. There’s hurricanes in Florida and Texas needs rain. The whole world is festering with unhappy souls.,” etc. It ends with….They’re rioting in Africa, there’s strife in Iran. What nature doesn’t do to us, will be done by our fellow man.”
Anne
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