JancePreorder@gmail.com<\/a>. And to sweeten the pot even more, I’ll select one preorder-er to win signed copies of the whole Ali Reynolds series!<\/p>\nNow, back to the blog.<\/p>\n
Evie Busk, my mother, loved jokes and puns and poetry. Well into her eighties she could still recite Henry Wadsworth Longfellow\u2019s Song of Hiawatha from beginning to end\u2014and liked to do so. On our driving trips back and forth between Arizona and South Dakota, out on the prairies where radio signals didn\u2019t reach, she entertained us with songs.<\/p>\n
In My Fair Lady Professor Henry Higgins claims that women\u2019s heads are full of \u201ccotton, hay, and rags.\u201d My mother\u2019s head was full of song lyrics, verse upon verse, the sadder the better.<\/p>\n
Oh, they cut down the old pine tree,
\nAnd they hauled it away to the mill,
\nThere\u2019ll be no cabin of pine
\nFor that sweetheart of mine
\nSince they cut down the old pine tree.
\nBut she\u2019s not alone in her grave tonight,
\nT\u2019is there my heart will ever be,
\nThough we drifted apart
\nStill they cut down my heart,
\nWhen they cut down the old pine tree.<\/p>\n
And then there was the heart breaker, \u201cIn the baggage Coach Ahead.\u201d In that one a young man is on a train, caring for a very fussy and cranky baby. Two nosy busybodies on the train go up to him and demand to know where is that child\u2019s mother. His reply? \u201cShe\u2019s in the baggage coach ahead.\u201d That one never failed to make me cry.<\/p>\n
But there were funny songs, too: Vive La Cookery Maid.<\/p>\n
There once was a maiden to cooking school went
\nVive la cookery maid.
\nOn dishes delicious her heart was intent
\nVive la cookery maid.
\nHer apron was spotless,
\nHer cap it was neat.
\nThe figure she made
\nWas distractingly sweet
\nBut the stuff she concocted
\nA goat couldn\u2019t eat.
\nVive la cookery maid.<\/p>\n
There are several more verses including one that recounts the story of a robber who makes the mistake of breaking intoner house and sampling a recently baked pie. As a consequence, he comes to an untimely end. No wonder I liked that song. It came complete with forensics.<\/p>\n
And then there was Ain\u2019t We Crazy.<\/p>\n
I know a little ditty
\nIt\u2019s as crazy as can be.
\nThe guy who wrote it
\nDidn\u2019t want it
\nSo he handed it to me.
\nHe said he didn\u2019t want it
\nBecause he thought it blue
\nAnd that\u2019s the very reason
\nThat I\u2019m handing it to you.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the song the alligators sang
\nWhile coming through the rye
\nTo serenade the elephants
\nUp in the trees so high.
\nIt\u2019s the song the iceman shouted
\nAs he shoveled in the cold
\nAnd was echoed by the monkeys
\nUp around the northern pole.<\/p>\n
There are lots more verses to that one, and my mother knew them all. You can look them up on the Internet if you\u2019re interested.<\/p>\n
But this morning when my eyes popped open, my mother\u2019s voice was there in my ear, reminding me of a poem she recited from time to time. I could only remember a few bits and pieces of it, and, with her gone, I thought the poem was gone, too.<\/p>\n
Evie was born in 1914 and her death in her early nineties predates much of what we know today as the Internet. To my surprise, though, just now when I googled the pieces of that poem that I did remember, I came away with the whole thing.<\/p>\n
Mysteries of Anatomy<\/p>\n
Where can a man buy a cap for his knee,
\nOr the key to a lock of his hair?
\nCan his eyes be called an academy
\nBecause there are pupils there?
\nIs the crown of your head where jewels are found?
\nWho travels the bridge of your nose?
\nCan you use in shingling the roof of your mouth,
\nThe nails on the ends of your toes?
\nCan you sit in the shade of the palm of your hand,
\nOr beat on the drum of your ear?
\nCan the calf in your leg eat the corn off your toe?
\nThen why not raise corn on the ear?
\nCan the crook in your elbow be sent to jail?
\nIf so, just what did he do?
\nHow can you sharpen your shoulder blades?
\nI’ll be darned if I know – do you?<\/p>\n
These are literally, the words I learned at my mother\u2019s knee. They\u2019re part of what made me who I am today\u2014someone who loves words and music. Someone who loves a good joke or a good pun.<\/p>\n
I owe my mother a great deal, and so do my readers.<\/p>\n
Thank you, Evie!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You\u2019ll find this week\u2019s blog written below, but first a brief word from our sponsors. THE A LIST will be out before we know it, so I’m offering a bonus to anyone who preorders before April 2–an exclusive essay I’ve written, “A Brief History of Characters,” that talks about how I created Ali Reynolds and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[33,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-family"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-td","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1811"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1812,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1811\/revisions\/1812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}