Remember Camp Capers and Kitchen Capers? Those were the euphemisms adopted in the early '40's for what we all called Hard Jobs and Easy Jobs. The hard Job I most remember was scrubbing the wooden latrine seats with a hard brush dipped in a mixture of CN and water. This job was memorialized in the only stanza I remember hearing the Prenti Unit sing in 1943 (to the tune of "I Have Spurs that Jingle, Jangle, Jingle"):
We have work, and little kids to do it
As we scrub all the la seats in the camp,
And we sing, 'Oh, ain't we glad we're Prenties,'
And that song ain't so very far from wrong!
Oh, CN dear, oh, CN dear,
We dilute you and salute you as we never did before...
Remember? Who could forget?
Lennie
I remember the "CN" song very well. When my three daughters were old enough, I taught them as many of the Quidnunc songs that I could remember. I still play them on my piano and sing along with the music.
ReplyDeleteMarjorie "Mickie" Stamler Bergemann
Quidnunc 1942