Weird and Wonderful

I learned it from my mother.  She would lead my sisters and me in it when we went for a walk together or to pass time on a car trip to Grammy and Grandad’s farm or to the shore.  I don’t remember ever singing it with anyone else’s family or singing it in school or at camp or listening to it on a record or on the radio.

     I’ve been working on the railroad

     All the livelong day.

     I’ve been working on the railroad 

     Just to pass the time away.

It puzzled me then.  It puzzles me now.  The subject of the first line, I, seems to be a man.  Women didn’t work on the railroads, right?  But why in tarnation would anybody, man or woman, work on the railroad just to pass the time away when building the railroads was killing work?

     Can’t you hear the whistle blowing?

     Rise up so early in the morn.

     Can’t you hear the captain shouting?

     Dinah, blow your horn.

Now wait a minute.  Just one doggone minute.  A captain?  On the railroad?  Well, OK, maybe the railroad workers called their crew boss Captain but doesn’t Captain sound a bit nautical for a landlocked enterprise?  And just who in the heck is Dinah and what is she doing out here where I’ve been working on the railroad and what is the horn all about?  

Mysteries.

Speaking of mysteries, here comes another one, this one structural.

     Dinah won’t you blow

     Dinah won’t you blow

     Dinah won’t you blow your horn?

     Dinah won’t you blow

     Dinah won’t you blow

     Dinah won’t you blow your horn?

Right smack in the middle of the song, composed so far of alternating four-beat lines and three-beat lines, you find yourself imploring Dinah for six straight lines at twice the pace of the foregoing eight.

Blow, Dinah!

Next.  A change of venue.  She is not out here working on the railroad after all; she is in the kitchen.  With someone.  With someone I know, no less.

     Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah,

     Someone’s in the kitchen I know.

     Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah,

     Strummin’ on the old banjo.

OK.  Confession.  For whatever reason, perhaps because I am a guy, these lines strike a, ah, suggestive note in my ear.  Yes, a suggestive note.  Even though the pronoun, Someone, is gender neutral, I just know that that Someone is a guy.  For three lines my suspicion of Someone’s intentions mounts and hardens until the fourth line redeems things . . . he’s just strummin’ on the old banjo.  Whew!

     Fee fi fiddly-i-o

     Fee fi fiddly-i-o

     Fee fi fiddly-i-o

     Strummin’ on the old banjo.

Nonsense from start to finish.  Murky characters.  A plot line written by Jabberwocky with a pogo stick.  Time warps.  Venue shifts.  Tempo the consistency of a sneezing fit.  To say nothing of Fee fi fiddly-i-o.  

Sheesh.

Maybe that nonsense factor is what makes it so memorable.

Four years ago I visited Peru with a tour group company.  A dozen of us gringos rode around from site to site in a van with excellent shock absorbers.  They arranged a visit to an elementary school where the classroom students melted and charmed us with their presentations and shy smiles.  At the end they assembled in front of the chalk board and sang us a song.  We huddled to decide what to sing in return.  Two of us hailed from California, four from Bethesda, one from New York City, two from Georgia.  Beyond that I can’t remember, but you get it.  All over the place.

Guess what we sang.  Yup.  No rehearsal.  No pitch pipe.  Just I’ve Been Working on the Railroad by heart from start to finish.  Nobody among us missed one syllable or one beat or one note, not even the prolonged voice stretching o at the end of the penultimate line.

Go explain that.

I conclude after a lifetime of singing this lively bit of blather and thinking about it with scholarly attention that it is a genetic thing.  We all inherited I’ve Been Working on the Railroad with our eye color.  Kate and Tucker and Megan and Sean have been singing it for decades, and as soon as the grandkids can sing, they will join the chorus.  Already they have heard it from the back seat scores or hundreds of times.

Strummin’ on the old banjo.

The next generation.