Songs I have sung
26/05/12 02:46
I know that Hank Harris doesn’t sing it this way in the Deadwood Songbook, but the way I learned the song, the words are like this:
A cattle trail drunk and a hard road to travel,
That old Jack O’ Diamonds is a hard card to play.
Get along, get along, get along little doggies,
Get along little doggies and be on your way.
Whoop-ee-ti-yi-yo! Get along little doggies,
It’s your misfortune and none of my own.
Whoop-ee-ti-yi-yo! Get along little doggies,
You know that Montana will be your new home.
There are more verses, but the key three syllable word in the chorus is “Montana” and not “Wyoming” when the song is sung in the grade schools of my home state. The great cattle drives of the late 19th Century brought stock all the way from Texas to Montana to provide food for the miners during the gold rush days. They were Texas Longhorns and they were sturdy critters, even though the losses on the long trail drives were significant. Even more were lost during some of the harsh Montana winters. Those sturdy beasts could take the -30 temperatures with the wind blowing as long as they could find a little shelter, but when the drifts got so deep that they were cut off from feed, they couldn’t maintain their body temperatures without eating.
There are other songs that I memorized as well. You can sing along if you’d like. This one adds the same chorus as above but you’ve got to really yodel on the Whoope-ee-ti-yi-yo:
My home’s in Montana
I wear a bandanna
My spurs are of silver
My pony is gray
When riding the ranges,
My luck never changes,
My foot in the stirrup
I gallop away
All together, now:
Whoop-ee-ti-yi-yo! Get along little doggies,
It’s your misfortune and none of my own.
Whoop-ee-ti-yi-yo! Get along little doggies,
You know that Montana will be your new home.
And when I was six or seven, we could really get to giggling by singing the song this way:
My home’s in Montana
I wear a banana
My spurs give me slivers
My pony is gay
When riding the ranges,
My luck never changes,
My foot in the syrup
I gallop away!
Even louder this time:
Whoop-ee-ti-yi-yo! Get along little froggies,
It’s your misspelling and none of my own.
Whoop-ee-ti-yi-yo! Get along little froggies,
Just hop to Montana and you’ll be wind blown.
You get the idea. So It seems perfectly natural to me that when I ran up to town to pick up some packing boxes yesterday morning I spotted a motor home with a really big set of longhorns on the front. That motor home sports Montana plates with county number 40. That’s Sweetgrass County – the county of my birth and growing up years. It isn’t every county where the mascot of the high school teams is the Sheepherder. It isn’t every county that has a rifle range in the basement because target shooting is one of the extra-curricular activities of the school. I might not have gotten the best grades in high school, but I did get an education that was, well, unique.
I know that I no longer fit in here in my old hometown. From my point of view, a whole lot of the people who now live here are latecomers. You could have lived here for 40 years and not known that I once lived here. Only the old timers remember when 500 McLeod was home to four rather rambunctious boys and the oldest two were darn hard to tell apart. They don’t remember when the airport was run by Sky Flight, Incorporated and the silver twin beech was an air ambulance that took burn patients to Galveston and brain injured patients to Mayo Clinic. They can’t remember when Big Timber Farm Supply was known as “The Store with the Plow on the Roof” and sported a feed warehouse where the roof was supported by trusses made from 2 x 2’s because that was what was most affordable at the time. It takes a lot of 2 x 2’s to create the pattern of triangles to support the snow loads we get in this town.
But people don’t remember those things any more.
There are a couple of things that I’m just as glad they don’t remember. Like the time when a couple of boys, who will remain unnamed, because to this day they have remained un-caught, climbed up into the spruce trees in front of the library with water balloons. I’m pretty sure that they no longer tell the story of the day someone (also unnamed) stole the light bar off of the police car and set it up on a couple of sawhorses in the middle of main street. Then they went back and “borrowed” the battery from the same car to make the lights flash.
Life is different these days, but I think there may still be a bit of the “Whoop-ee-ty-yi-yo in the old guy, yet.
We have been sifting and sorting memories as we pack boxes and meet with the realtor. We’ve found pictures that recalled to us how we dressed in the 1960’s. “You really went out in public wearing that?!” We’ve shared stories that are differently remembered, depending on who tells them. We’ve giggled ourselves silly over some of the pictures in the old albums.
Developmental psychologists call the task “integration.” It is essential for adults to sift and sort the stories of their lives and form a meaningful pattern in order for them to enter into maturity. I guess that this type of re-living our childhood is a way of growing up. Sorting through our parents’ possessions does have its own kind of lessons. It is hard but worthy work for us as we face our own mortality and ponder the vast amounts of things we have accumulated over the years.
So, I was wondering if Hank Harris knows the “ real” words to another song that I think is on his album:
Amazing Grace, o what great fun
To play a joke on Grace!
How precious was the look on her face.
The hour I first yelled “Boo!”
OK that one still needs some work. You don’t want to hear our alternative words to “Blessed Quietness.”
A cattle trail drunk and a hard road to travel,
That old Jack O’ Diamonds is a hard card to play.
Get along, get along, get along little doggies,
Get along little doggies and be on your way.
Whoop-ee-ti-yi-yo! Get along little doggies,
It’s your misfortune and none of my own.
Whoop-ee-ti-yi-yo! Get along little doggies,
You know that Montana will be your new home.
There are more verses, but the key three syllable word in the chorus is “Montana” and not “Wyoming” when the song is sung in the grade schools of my home state. The great cattle drives of the late 19th Century brought stock all the way from Texas to Montana to provide food for the miners during the gold rush days. They were Texas Longhorns and they were sturdy critters, even though the losses on the long trail drives were significant. Even more were lost during some of the harsh Montana winters. Those sturdy beasts could take the -30 temperatures with the wind blowing as long as they could find a little shelter, but when the drifts got so deep that they were cut off from feed, they couldn’t maintain their body temperatures without eating.
There are other songs that I memorized as well. You can sing along if you’d like. This one adds the same chorus as above but you’ve got to really yodel on the Whoope-ee-ti-yi-yo:
My home’s in Montana
I wear a bandanna
My spurs are of silver
My pony is gray
When riding the ranges,
My luck never changes,
My foot in the stirrup
I gallop away
All together, now:
Whoop-ee-ti-yi-yo! Get along little doggies,
It’s your misfortune and none of my own.
Whoop-ee-ti-yi-yo! Get along little doggies,
You know that Montana will be your new home.
And when I was six or seven, we could really get to giggling by singing the song this way:
My home’s in Montana
I wear a banana
My spurs give me slivers
My pony is gay
When riding the ranges,
My luck never changes,
My foot in the syrup
I gallop away!
Even louder this time:
Whoop-ee-ti-yi-yo! Get along little froggies,
It’s your misspelling and none of my own.
Whoop-ee-ti-yi-yo! Get along little froggies,
Just hop to Montana and you’ll be wind blown.
I know that I no longer fit in here in my old hometown. From my point of view, a whole lot of the people who now live here are latecomers. You could have lived here for 40 years and not known that I once lived here. Only the old timers remember when 500 McLeod was home to four rather rambunctious boys and the oldest two were darn hard to tell apart. They don’t remember when the airport was run by Sky Flight, Incorporated and the silver twin beech was an air ambulance that took burn patients to Galveston and brain injured patients to Mayo Clinic. They can’t remember when Big Timber Farm Supply was known as “The Store with the Plow on the Roof” and sported a feed warehouse where the roof was supported by trusses made from 2 x 2’s because that was what was most affordable at the time. It takes a lot of 2 x 2’s to create the pattern of triangles to support the snow loads we get in this town.
But people don’t remember those things any more.
There are a couple of things that I’m just as glad they don’t remember. Like the time when a couple of boys, who will remain unnamed, because to this day they have remained un-caught, climbed up into the spruce trees in front of the library with water balloons. I’m pretty sure that they no longer tell the story of the day someone (also unnamed) stole the light bar off of the police car and set it up on a couple of sawhorses in the middle of main street. Then they went back and “borrowed” the battery from the same car to make the lights flash.
Life is different these days, but I think there may still be a bit of the “Whoop-ee-ty-yi-yo in the old guy, yet.
Developmental psychologists call the task “integration.” It is essential for adults to sift and sort the stories of their lives and form a meaningful pattern in order for them to enter into maturity. I guess that this type of re-living our childhood is a way of growing up. Sorting through our parents’ possessions does have its own kind of lessons. It is hard but worthy work for us as we face our own mortality and ponder the vast amounts of things we have accumulated over the years.
So, I was wondering if Hank Harris knows the “ real” words to another song that I think is on his album:
Amazing Grace, o what great fun
To play a joke on Grace!
How precious was the look on her face.
The hour I first yelled “Boo!”
OK that one still needs some work. You don’t want to hear our alternative words to “Blessed Quietness.”