Once upon a time in Arkansas

It's a song. I don't know if that's the name of the song and I don't even remember all the words but it was the song I sang at my audition for the Sydney Children's Choir in about 1987. Yes, I used to be able to sing in tune but my hearing is too crappola these days... It wasn't called the Sydney Children's Choir in 1987, but the 2MBSFM Choir but I was still around for the launch of the new-look SCC in 1989 (yay me!) and spent a another couple of years singing with them until I was too adultish to get away with it any more.

...which brings me to Facebook. How cool is it that I can type in Sydney Children's Choir in the FB search and come up with a group chock full of all my old choirmates? And old schoolmates too (different group of course). I didn't get the point of FB when I first joined but am now really appreciating the social networking side of things. I love getting in contact with people from my past, who back even 5 years ago I wouldn't have had a hope of finding.

I've found a heap of old friends from my favourite high school (I went to 3) and have caught up with one who happens to live not far from me. Talk about a blast from the past! It's so cool to see the paths people's lives have taken over the 15-20 years since I last knew them.

Okay, got off my bum and googled the song. (I lie. I sat on my bum the entire time). Here's a random Youtube chick fiddling at the tune that she liked to hear, captured with some truly ace camera work:



and here are the lerrks (lifted from http://ingeb.org/songs/ohonceup.html):

The Arkansas Traveler

Oh once upon a time in Arkansas
An old man sat in his little cabin door,
And fiddled at a tune that he liked to hear,
A jolly old tune that he played by ear.

It was raining hard but the fiddler didn't care
He sawed away at the popular air,
Though his roof tree leaked like a water fall
That didn't seem to bother that man at all

A traveler was riding by that day,
And stopped to hear him a-practicing away
The cabin was afloat and his feet were wet,
But still the old man didn't seem to fret.

So the stranger said: "Now the way it seems to me,
You'd better mend your roof," said he.
But the old man said, as he played away:
"I couldn't mend it now, it's a rainy day."

The traveler replied: "That's all quite true,
But this, I think, is the thing for you to do;
Get busy on a day that is fair and bright,
Then pitch the old roof till it's good and tight."

But the old man kept on a-playing at his reel,
And tapped the ground with his leathery heel:
"Get along," said he, "for you give me a pain;
My cabin never leaks when it doesn't rain."