Month: September 2010

The Crocodile Song

I do not know the origins of The Crocodile Song, don’t know who wrote it or when, never heard anyone else sing it.

My father would have been 84 tomorrow. There’s a guy, Ray, who was my friend from second to ninth grade. He went to a different high school and moved to the Finger Lakes region of New York State. However, I was in his wedding in October 1976, and I got to escort his mother, who was the Den mother of our Cub Scout troop, down the aisle.

He’s now my Facebook friend. About a month ago, unbidden, he started sending these messages, a verse at a time:

“Sung by: Les Green
To the kids of the ‘50s and ‘60s at Daniel S. Dickinson, PS #9 School, Binghamton, NY

“The Crocodile Song”
First verse
Come gather around me children to tell the truth I’m bound
Here’s a story when I went to sea and the wonders that I found
Ship wrecked was I one lonely day and cast upon the shore
Now I decided to wonder way the country to explore, explore the country to explore
So I sang, toddle oddle oddle oddle oo I ey, toddle oddle oddle oddle oo I ey
Now, I decided to wonder way the country to explore

Second verse
Well, I had not long walked when there beside the ocean
I saw something move, like all the world in motion
Now I creep up beside the thing, it was a great big crocodile
From the end of his nose to the tip of his tail was about 500 miles, yes about 500 miles
So I sang, toddle oddle oddle oddle oo I ey, toddle oddle oddle oddle oo I ey
From the end of his nose to the tip of his tail was about 500 miles

Third verse
Now I could plainly see this was none of the common race
For I had to climb a tall tall tree before I could see his face
The wind was blowing so hard up there, it blow with a gale form the south
and I lost my grip on the big tall tree and fell smack dab in the crocodile’s mouth, yes smack dab in the crocodile’s mouth
So I sang, toddle oddle oddle oddle oo I ey, toddle oddle oddle oddle oo I ey
I lost my grip on the big tall tree and fell smack dab in the crocodile’s mouth

Fourth verse
Now I could see this crocodile was going to nab a victim….. me !
so I ran down his throat you see, and that’s the way I tricked him. see?
Now I wandered around for a year or two, until I reached his craw (that’s his stomach)
There was a rum case, not a few, and a thousand pullets (little chickens) in store in store, a thousand pullets in store
So I sang, toddle oddle oddle oddle oo I ey, toddle oddle oddle oddle oo I ey
There was a rum case, not a few, and a thousand pullets in store”

Final verse
Now the crocodile grew very very old and at a great long last, he died
It took him about six months to catch a cold he was so long and wide
His skin was about 10 miles thick, I think, or some where there about
For I was fully six months digging my way out, yes digging my way out
So I sang, toddle oddle oddle oddle oo I ey…, toddle oddle oddle oddle oo I ey
For I was fully six months digging my way out
and I got out just in time to come here and sing this song for you!

Ray wrote, “I think we all can remember every word of every song he sang.” Yes, twice a year, from when I was in kindergarten to fifth or sixth grade, my father came to our elementary school and sang songs to my class. Did the same for my sisters, the elder one for sure, since he often sang to each class on the same day. It was always slightly embarrassing when he sang Irene Goodnight, since there was a girl named Irene in the class, and the scuttlebutt was that I put him up to singing the song because I had a crush on her, which I did not.

I do not know the origins of The Crocodile Song, don’t know who wrote it or when, never heard anyone else sing it. There’s another Crocodile Song on the Internet, but it ain’t this one!

I know I sang at my baby sister’s class – specifically remember The Old Lady and the Fly – when she was in kindergarten and I was in 6th grade. Leslie and I also sang at our niece Alex’s class several years ago, part of the Les Green tradition.

From Darlanne to Jaquandor

pictures of Rod Serling and his teacher (and mine), Helen Foley, one of his greatest influences (and mine)

WAY back in February, that blogger from Buffalo, Jaquandor wrote about the entertainingly cheesy (or is it cheekily entertaining?) 1980 movie Battle Beyond the Stars.

Of particular interest to me was this paragraph:

“The other girl there is Nanelia (Darlanne Fluegel), who is every bit as naïve about people as Shad is, which makes her a perfect fit for him. She, too, gets far too little screentime because she’s really cute. I remember her being one of the first females onscreen to impress me with her cuteness. I mean, look how cute she is in that clip, when she giggles at the prospect of learning how to “tingle, tangle, prangle” her new love interest from this warrior in the goofy headdress! Yeah, Nanelia is really, really cute:”

I had to comment: “Never saw the movie.

But I went to Binghamton Central High School with Darlanne Fluegel!

(I think she was Darlene at the time, but I could be wrong.) So maybe I should see it. Or not.” I didn’t know her well, but I knew her older sister better, for the record. In fact, if her IMDB piece is correct, she’s more than five years younger than I am. That can’t be right, can it?

Jaquandor asks, “Roger: was she that cute in high school?”

I wrote: “There is a picture in my high school yearbook. I’ll have to scan it for you. (In answer to your question, I say yes.).”

A few days later, I wrote: “J- Haven’t forgotten; we’re painting the attic and I can’t get to my yearbooks yet.” That proved to be true for MONTHS (long story).

But finally – the young woman in the lower right:

I had not looked at that yearbook in decades and STILL remembered that particular photo.

So anyway, early happy birthday, Jaquandor. (It’ll be September 26.)

Since I had the yearbook out, I also scanned these pictures of Rod Serling and his teacher (and mine), Helen Foley, one of his greatest influences (and mine). Note the constant cigarette in his hand.

Roger Answers Your Questions, Shooting Parrot, Tom the Mayor, and Rose

Albany is the right size for me.


I’ve been to the blog of Shooting Parrots, and have yet to see any dead or maimed birds. Regardless, he asked:

With most blogs, you get a sense of a life, but not necessarily a sense of place, apart from hints here and there. Could you describe the area where you live, what you like and/or hate about it, its history, the places you like to visit and things you like to do? Pretty much a blank cheque really!

Yikes, this is tough! So open-ended. Well, OK.

Albany is the capital of New York State. One of the things that kinda annoys me about that is that people from other parts of the state say we have to “fix Albany” when they mean state government. It’s like “fixing Washington” when referring to the US federal government.

Not that there aren’t things to fix in the city itself. Part of it has to do with bizarre urban planning. There is something generally called the Empire State Plaza, or the South Mall, which was built in the 1960s, apparently, as a result of the then-governor, Nelson Rockefeller, a Republican, being embarrassed by Albany’s allegedly parochial look when some Dutch royalty was visiting. This involved tearing down dozens of houses, and made the city’s downtown less walkable and vibrant in many ways, though it did provide it with its distinctive skyline.

Of course, Rocky couldn’t have pulled it off without the support of the city’s mayor, Erastus Corning, a Democrat, who ended up being mayor for 41 years. This is STILL a one-party town and has been for nearly a century. I don’t think there’s a single non-Democrat on the Common Council (and if there is, it’s a Green, not a Republican). This makes the primary election all important.

There is a long-standing event every year called Pinksterfest or the Tulip Festival that goes on in Washington Park on Mother’s Day weekend in May. Washington Park, BTW, was designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, the guy who planned New York City’s Central Park, among many others. when I lived closer to the park, I didn’t mind not having a yard, because I had the huge yard that was the park.

This is a university town. I recently wrote about that.

Albany is often called, derisively, Smallbany, because there’s a good chance that, particularly in the arts/progressive community, you all know each other or know somebody a degree or two away. I HATE when, in describing Albany’s virtues, one notes that it’s three hours to New York City, Boston, or Montreal, as though its proximity to SOMEWHERE ELSE is its sole calling card. Also, Montreal is at least four hours away, unless you drive like one of my brothers-in-law.

It’s like those TV shows that tease – in the middle of the show, in the lower corner – the NEXT show, as though watching THIS show isn’t good enough to be watching. And it is. For all its flaws, I like Albany. It’s working hard to TRY to be a more livable city. The population is well-educated, in the main, and reasonably liberal.

Speaking of TV, the first TV program was broadcast around here. Really. I’ve been to the Schenectady Museum, where there’s lots of early broadcast equipment.

There are some lovely old buildings here. Coincidentally, just this month, I visited the state Capitol on a tour. The interesting thing is that when it was built, there were massive cost overruns and a four-year project took about 40 and was technically unfinished when Governor Theodore Roosevelt, one of four New York State governors to eventually become President, pulled the plug. So state government’s incompetence is not a recent phenomenon.

Albany is the right size for me. Not overwhelmingly large like New York City, or too small, like my hometown of Binghamton, NY has become. Because it’s the capital, there are usually events going on, some of them free, though not as many lately due to budgetary constraints.

Specifically, I live in a section called the Pine Hills, which has both homeowners and student renters, a good thing, I believe. I can walk to the post office, drug store, supermarket, and movie theater.

I like Albany because it’s an old city, founded in 1686. It has a history, which it sometimes undermines, but cannot entirely. In some newer cities, I’ve found lots of shinier buildings, but no THERE there.

What do I DO here? The wife and I try to go on a date once a month. It might be a restaurant, a movie (almost never at a theater in the malls), or the Albany Symphony, which plays in Albany and Troy. Used to go to Capital Rep theatre, but I think we’ve been there once since the child was born. There’s Proctor’s Theatre in Schenectady, a nearby city, an old revitalized vaudeville house that I happen to love. And not that far out of town, is Thatcher Park, with tremendous views.

Tanya Bayo came by to say: In the chinese culture, the autumnal equinox coincides with what we call the “mid autumn festival”. During this time we get together with close friends and relatives to play a dice game and give mooncakes to each other. Thanks for that, Tanya.

Tom the Mayor, with whom I worked at the comic book store FantaCo asked:
Did the fact that Fantaco was publishing some pretty gruesome, {and selling some even more gruesome}, books have a part in your leaving Fantaco when you did?

Well, sorta. We started selling books like that as early as 1981 when we published Splatter Movies. But it wasn’t the gruesomeness that turned me off, it was the fact that I was no longer even reading the products we were publishing, because of their gruesomeness, to be sure, that made me feel very detached from the place at a certain point. I was shocked to go through my journal from the summer of 1987 and see that I wrote that I would leave in a year; I didn’t leave until November 1988, but I knew I wasn’t going to stay there forever. And if the market had allowed us to do more stuff like the Chronicles, it might have been different.

Ironically, if I had stayed, I could have made quite a bit of money, because I was making a percentage of mail-order sales of goods that I just wasn’t that into.
***
Rose asked:
You recently switched from Blogger to WordPress, how do you like WordPress compared to Blogger?

It’s funny. I’m typing this in Blogger because I find it easier. Sometimes when I’m typing in WP, the screen jumps, especially when I’m trying to put in some simple HTML code. Also, Blogger will SAVE NOW automatically; maybe WP does too, but I’ve typed stuff, failed to save it, and lost stuff on WP; that made me crazy. And I still haven’t mastered the photos on WP. When I had my Times Union blog, before this one, I wanted to put in a picture of Dudley Do-Right, who I thought looked a bit like the former governor Eliot Spitzer, and the photo ended up twice the size of the page, so I put pictures in Blogger.

That said, I like the LOOK of the WordPress blog much better, I like the Akismet spam blocker, I like how I can reply to specific questions.

BTW, Rose’s question wasn’t an idle one. The blog I’m on now I won in a contest she held back in February, I think. Not incidentally, she’s holding another one.

Rose also asked:
Why did you choose to be a librarian?

I will refer you to the aforementioned Times Union blog, where I answered that very question just this month!

Scott, Anne-Marie, and anybody else, more answers on Monday!

September Equinox ASK ROGER ANYTHING

Now this does allow for me to engage in obfuscation – “depends on what the definition of ‘is’ is” – but I can’t duck it altogether.

Just recently, I was musing what to call it when the daytime and the nighttime are the same lengths. Used to be that, in March, I would describe it as the spring equinox in the Northern Hemisphere and the autumnal equinox in the Southern Hemisphere. In September, it would be reversed. But that meant too many words. Recently, though someone, I forget who, though I have a guess, suggested calling them the September equinox and the March equinox; brilliant in its simplicity! And it works as well for the June and December solstices as well.

Anyway, this is an occasion when I get REALLY lazy. I decide, “Hey, I write this thing every day; the LEAST my vast 😉 audience can do is help me along with the content once in a while.” It is not entirely selfish, either. If I ask you, and you respond, then I answer, I am giving the people what they want. It also gives my fellow bloggers the opportunity to retaliate for the nasty questions I ask them.

Here are the rules: you get to ask me (Roger) any old thing you want to. No boundaries, no limits. Moreover, I have to answer it, and I must do so honestly. Now this does allow for me to engage in obfuscation – “depends on what the definition of ‘is’ is” – but I can’t duck it altogether. You may ask in the comment section or, if you’d rather, e-mail me. I will say that responses to e-mails of people who wish to remain anonymous will probably be murkier than those from people who own their requests.

I will begin replying next week. Here’s a recent example; yes, I promise I won’t take two months to reply.

J is for Just large enough, and Jupiter

My father painted, right on the ceiling in my room, the solar system!


When we were growing up, we lived on the first floor of a small two-story house, which was owned by my maternal grandmother; my paternal grandparents lived upstairs. On our floor was the master bedroom and kitchen in the back; the parlor, bathroom, and another bedroom in the middle; and the living room in the front.

I had two younger sisters, so they eventually slept in bunk beds in the second bedroom. To make a room for me, my father built a wall in the parlor that ran from the kitchen entrance about 2/3 of the way into the room, then another wall at a 90-degree angle from the first, leaving about an entrance to my room the size of a standard door, though I did not actually HAVE a door. Then he built a solid piece of wood – think one large shelf – held up by the two new walls and the existing wall to serve as the frame for my “bed”. On top of that was actually a foam mattress.

I did have room for my stuff under the bed, including a very low dresser. Around the corner was my bookcase, filled with my Golden Book Encyclopedias, my World Almanac, and other books.

In one of those books was a description of the solar system, and it gave relative sizes of the sun and the planets. The sun was a beach ball, Jupiter was a grapefruit; I forget the rest. So my father painted, right on the ceiling in my room, the solar system! This huge sun, and the various planets, including their known moons at the time. I specifically remember that according to the book: Jupiter had 12, Saturn 9, Neptune 5, Uranus and Mars 2 apiece, Earth and Pluto, 1 each.

And since the walls my father built didn’t go to the ceiling – there was a single ceiling light that illuminated the parlor, now essentially a hallway, and my room – anyone coming to visit us who came into the kitchen or bathroom was likely to see at least this massive star on the ceiling.

Incidentally, my father painted on the walls a lot. In my sisters’ room, there was a very good Tinker Bell and the head of Felix the Cat. In the living room, on one wall, was a stark snowy mountain scene. On the other was a marketplace in Europe done in the style, as I think back on it, of Monet.


Oh, yeah, Jupiter, named after the Roman god. It now has over 50 satellites; some may actually be asteroids, pulled in by the planet’s massive gravitational force. It appears that Jupiter has lost a stripe fairly recently, having something to do with dissipating gases. From a NASA Voyager recording, you can actually hear Jupiter. The planet 11 times the size of Earth was, on September 20, 2010, only 368 million miles away, as close as it will get for 12 years.

Finally,

Jupiter’s Two Largest Storms Nearly Collide, storms larger than the diameter of the planet Earth (Credit & Copyright: Travis Rector (U. Alaska), Chad Trujillo (Caltech), et al., Gemini Obs., AURA, NSF)

ABC Wednesday – Round 7

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