March 31, 1966
Jocie Brooke here reporting from Hollyhill, Kentucky where not much happens in March. That’s for sure. But it is spring and Miss Sally’s chickens are getting cute little feathers and it’s warm enough for me to ride my bicycle or go roller skating. But roller skating is more fun when somebody is roller skating with you and Aunt Love has a fit when I say I want to roller skate to town. So I stick with the bicycle. Faster that way too.
Leigh says she can’t roller skate – that she’d end up with scrapes and bruises. So I’ve just been helping her dig up a new flower bed. She wants to plant tulips. She says she loves tulips. She never met my Mama Mae, but if she had, Mama Mae would have loved her because she makes my daddy laugh.
That’s a good thing. To marry somebody who makes you laugh. I want to do that too. Someday. Not in any hurry at all. So far every boy I’ve met is way weird. Leigh says I’ll change my thinking on that when I get older, but gee whiz, I’m already 14.
Lots of girls my age are walking the halls at high school holding hands with some boy. I’m thinking it would be real hard to carry a whole armload of books while you had to hold somebody’s hand. Leigh laughed when I told her that. She said the boys were supposed to be carrying the books for the girls. Yeah, like that would happen for me.
Do you like Roger Miller? Thinking about roller skating made me remember seeing him on the Grammy show the other night and some of the silly songs he likes to sing. He won a bunch of Grammy awards for “King of the Road.” We got to watch the award show on television and see him sing that song. It’s a good thing he wasn’t singing “Chug a Lug.” Aunt Love would have probably made us turn it off. Not that hearing that song would ever make me want to take a chug from a moonshine jug. I’m smarter than that.
Anyway, Leigh has one of his records with a song on it titled “You Can’t Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd.” Have you ever heard that one? It says you can’t take a shower in a parakeet cage and you can’t take a swim in a baseball pool and can’t go fishing in a watermelon patch along with other funny things, but that you can be happy if you’ve a mind to. I like that idea that we can be happy if we think about it the right way.
What’s a silly songs you like to sing?
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I remember a song called “The Name Game” by Shirley Ellis in the 1960’s. That was fun to try to sing.
Chicken Crowing on Sourwood Mountain
and On Top of Spaghetti are two that I often sing.
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Jocie here: Wow, Lee. Both of them sound really weird. I thought it was On Top of Old Smoky or something like that. On top of spaghetti sounds s little messy. And don’t roosters do the crowing? Those songs have to be fun to sing.
I had to Google the song. I don’t think I’d ever heard it. Such a fun title! I was never any good at roller skating.
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Jocie here: Not sure how you Google something, but I love to roller skate. I think if I ever do find a guy I like, he will take me to a roller rink and we can skate around and around.
Ohh the memories that photo of those skates bring! I don’t still have my skates, but I still have the key in a memory box of odds and ends. I rode my bike more than skating to town. But for a little over two years when we lived in town, I skated everywhere. I even skated to school several times.
But back to your question… my boys loved The Purple People Eater song. They sang it all the time. And of course who can resist a round of On Top Of Spaghetti. But my daughter collapsed into giggles when she heard the line “Jeremiah was a bullfrog” in 3 Dog Nights song Joy To the World. It just grabbed her funny bone, I guess. I still smile when I remember her falling over with giggles.
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Jocie here. Sounds like you know plenty of silly songs and things to get a girl giggling. That Purple People Eater – well, I’m just glad I’m not a purple people, but Wes sometimes says Jupiter people break out in purple spots. So guess they better watch out!
Ann here: My sister and I skated about a zillion miles when I was a kid around and around on our concrete front porch. I was envious of town kids’ sidewalks. LOL. My mother said she roller skated to town once when she was a kid. That was a good way for her. I don’t think she and her friend ever tried it again.
The Purple People Eater is a fun song. I think that was the one they played over and over for several days on a Louisville radio station when it was first starting up. And Jeremiah was a bullfrog is a line to catch your attention and obviously bring on the giggles. Plu the name of the group 3 Dog Nights. Oh, the memories.