A First Selection of Politically Incorrect

SONGS AND CRIES OF THE STREETS

Of Boro Park

1.

My father is a butcher

My mother cuts the meat

And I’m the little meatball

That rolls around the street.

This is a song we sang during the 1940s and 1950s in the school yard and on the streets.  It seemed that it had been there always.

2. 

My old man’s a garbage man

Just the same as your old man.

Hoorah, hoorah,

My father’s gonna be hung

Hoorah, hoorah,

For he was very mean to me

When I was very young.

My mother taught me this one.  It seemed it was based on a British version which she may have elarned when she was in school in the 1920s.

 3.

My mother gave me a nickel

To buy a pickle

I didn’t buy a pickle

I bought some chewin’ gum

Chew chew chew chew chewin’ gum

Chew chew chew chewin’ gum

I didn’t buy a pickle

I bought some chewin’ gum.

Again a song my mother taught me.  Sometimes she claimed to have composed, and other times she said it was part of a school play when she was a little girl.

4.

Whenever I go fishing

I take along some snuff

And spread it on the water

Until there is enough

And when the little fishies

All come up to sneeze

I wack ‘em on the head

And yell Gesundheit!

Hapchoo, Hapchoo,

I wack ‘em on the head

And when the little fishies

All come up to sneeze

I wack ‘em on the head

And yell Gesundheit!

My father taught me this one.  He always articulated all the words very carefully, especially the gutteral sounds of Hapchoo.

 5 

In Chinatown there lived a man

His name was Chickeree Chickeree Chan

His feet were long, his toes were short

And this is the way the Chinaman talked:

Chickeree Chickeree Chan

In a bananaka wowchee-wow.

This Chinaman was doomed to die

And in his coffin her did lie

His feet were long, his toes were short

And this is the way the Chinaman talked:

Chickeree Chickeree Chee

Chickeree Chickeree Chickaree Chow,

Wowchee-ow.

Apparently there are hundreds of versions of this from the 1920s and 1930s, but this is how my mother taught it to me.  She laughed uncontrollably at times when she would sing it.

6

You take a little hair

You take a little sweat

You put ‘em all together

And what do you get?

You get armpit.

I say armpit.

Now the hair begins to wiggle

And the sweat begins to flow.

You put ’em altogether

And what do you get?

You get armpit,

I say armpit.

Now there’s hair in belly buttons

And hair between your toes

But the best kind of hair

Grows out of your nose.

You get armpit

I say armpit.

My sister Laura and I made this up sometimes in the early 1950s.    It was later taught to one of my wife's sisters who sang it country-style in Kentucky or Oklahoma, and it was a great hit for several weeks.