Yes, I still try to say it on the first of the month. When did I first learn of this ritual? I can’t say for sure, but I think it was at Harand Camp — P&F year, when I was 15.
P&F was short for “Plain and Fancy,” for the cabins at Harand were named for musicals, with a few Western-themed exceptions. (Ponderosa and Rodeo.) The camp never mounted a production of P&F, which I believe is about New Yorkers among the Amish, but it did teach part of the score. Let’s see if I can remember what grows in Pennsylvania from A to Z. From memory, and I’m not going to cheat, unless singing to one’s self is a form of cheating:
Artichokes, Beets, Cauliflower, Dandelion Greens and Escarole. Fennel, Grapes and Honeydew Melons, Iceberg Lettuce for the salad bowl.
Juniper, Kale and Lovely Lentils, Melons, Nuts and Onions, too. Potatoes, Quince and Rutabagas, okay — I’ve completely run out of steam, and I was bluffing on a few of those. But I know there is some comedic wrangling over “X” and it ends with Zinnias! And I remember this verse:
All you need is field and a plow or two
And a bull who’s keeping company with a cow or two!
(Then you’ll have) Plenty of Pennsylvania!
Something, something meadows golden
And big red barns for holdin’
What goes to town on market day (on market day!)
Then you’ll have plenty of/plenty of/plenty of/plenty of
Plenty of Penn-syl-vane-eye-a!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hmmm. There was probably a reason we didn’t stage that show and I don’t think it was because Sulie and Pearl, the Harand sisters, were hostile to the Amish.
Which leads us to this question: What songs are stuck in _your_ heads?
I have a vast array of songs stuck in my head–maybe because there’s so much vacant space there. One of them is almost always “playing.”
Laura knows one:
“I don’t know what they have to say,”
It makes no difference anyway,
Whatever it is, I’m against it.”
“Lydia the Tattooed Lady;” lots of sad Hank Williams Sr. ballads (“I’m So Lonesome I Could Die,” Cold,Cold Heart,” et.al;lots of Irish songs; standards; blues; hilbilly (not homogenized C & W); even some Pink Floyd; and on and on.
Parodies are powerful, Doris Ann–Spike Jones’s “Brownie with the Light Blue Jeans,” “Cocktails for Two,” etc. and several Homer and Jethro classics surface from time to time.
The worst stuck songs are the songs I really don’t like. The absolute worst case–while driving alone on a long trip listening to an “Oldies” station, “Henry the VIII I Am” came on. After hearing it once (too many times), the words and music stuck with me for weeks. And now that I think of it,
“Henry the VIII I am, I am.
Henry the VIII I am, I am.
I got married to the lady next door…” (HELP! It’s back!)
Summer camp – oy. I Still can sing “I see the moon the moon sees me” and “Tell me WHY the stars do shine” among countless hundreds in my head. And yeah, “it was sad when the great ship went down” (except that song always came out so HAPPY at summer camp – er why?)
I am convinced, without a scintilla of proof, that brains remember music better than speech. In high school, we had to memorize 20 or so lines from Hamlet; I thought it the easiest assignment ever, since I was a high school student when “Hair” was out and after checking (and moving a few words around, I sat in class and wrote out, while humming to myself “What a Piece of Work is Man, How Noble in Reason….”
This is also supported by my knowing songs that I could SWEAR I never really listened to, at least parts of them.
Watching the show about movie music that was broadcast last week also brought up Rogers and Hammerstein (just about every song from every musical) as wel l as Lerner and Loewe.
And Laura, i can’t do it but I have friends who can sing the entire Tom Lehrer song about the elements.
Wow…”The Ladies Who Lunch” from Sondheim’s “Company;” Harry Connick’s “If I Could Give You More,” with the best (and catchiest) horn arrangement ever to come out of a 23-year-old;
Andi, I 100% agree with the assertion that music is easier for the brain to remember than speech. I don’t have any proof either, but there’s all kindsa proof that music helps the brain digest other information, and I think that must be part of it. I’m a musically-brained person anyway, but I find that, if anything, trying to think hard about anything non-musical makes me hear the song(s) in my head in exponentially greater clarity.
Well, it depends on the last “standard” I’ve heard,but it’s going to be something before the 1960s. I am, after all, terminally square.
Romberg, Kern, Porter, Gershwin, etc. resonate with me.
How about “Romance, the playboy who is born each spring to teach a a lonely hear to sing a very pretty song.”
It’s probably great for everyone I know that I can’t sing…and know it.
But then there are always songs, like “Glory, Glory” or “It was sad when the great ship went down.”
Then Margaret Maron’s latest book reminded me of “You Are My Sunshine.”
Songs…and parodies of songs are very powerful…the older one gets.
Camp songs stuck in my head: Going back to the early early days of JCC day camp, there is the insidious “The Littlest Worm” which, even now, has a tendency to get stuck inside my soda straw of a brain. As I grew up and moved on to sleepaway camps, the songs that people sang most often tended to be of the “faux dirty” variety in that we were eleven year olds who thought saying “fuck” was a huge, huge deal, especially in a pseudo religious camp. But the one that topped ‘em all was the next year, at a different camp. I can’t remember the exact situation but many of the campers were supposed to do some marching drill, and so people came up with songs to sing to the appropriate beat. One smartass decided that “Onward Christian Soldiers” would be a great one to sing–at a camp that was, if not completely <I>frum</I>, then awfully close. After ten minutes of enthusiastic repetition, the camp director got wind and rushed over to give us campers a very stern lecture. The marching proceeded in silence until the original smartass camper came up with the following:
“Onward Jewish soldiers
Marching off to war
With the Star of David
And the Jewish soul.”
But alas, it just didn’t have the same ring and the chant died off pretty quickly. But somehow, I still remember it–and get it stuck in my head if the rhythm ever matches up to my original memory.
I’ve been a huge fan of yours for years and was thrilled to learn that you were a Harander, as was I (I’m older, my last year was my 17th summer before college in 1960). And, would you believe — whenever driving through PA, talking about PA etc, that song plays in my head (it’s “Plenty IN Pennsylvania,” by the way). As I remember, we didn’t do the play, but we did sing the song as part of a musical review. My head is full of songs from Harand Camp — a truly joyous experience in my life.
Generally something from JACK’S BIG MUSIC SHOW.
Please, God, more episodes of JACK’S BIG MUSIC SHOW.
Please.