Work Song - Ivan Doig [82]
“Tell it to the Wobblies, Jack. I can’t get to sleep at night without hearing about pie in the sky. Can you?”
“Thee be right, it’s somewhat like a bug in the ear,” the Cornishman acknowledged, “but a ditty is just a ditty.”
“Ah, but it is much more than that,” I was roused in defense of melody and lyric. “A song says something to us that we can’t hear in any other way. There is a kind of magic to it. Music does not simply soothe the savage breast, it reaches to our better nature, wouldn’t we all agree?”
Not a word nor nod from this uncooperative audience.
“A tune keeps us company,” I refined that, “when we need a bit of cheer. We don’t whistle just to let air out of ourselves, do we?”
Whistlers in their spare time or not, the entire bunch sat there with lips firmly clamped.
“Or,” I tried a different tack, “sing in the church choir merely to show off the starch in our shirts?”
Even Griff was looking stony now, in the frieze of unmoved faces.
Frustration giving way to desperation, I burst out: “How else was the Erie Canal dug but to the chant of workmen who had come from the world over ‘to see what they could see / on the Ee-rye-ee’? Nor would railroads such as the Union Pacific have conquered the continent without the chorus of Irish tracklayers”—a hopeful glance toward Quinlan here—“swinging their sledgehammers to the rhythm of ‘No leshure in your day, / no sugar in your tay, / working for the U Pay Railway. ’ ” By then I was onto my feet. “And I would bet any amount some of you lately marched in the service of your country to the memorable strains of ‘You might forget the gas and shell, parlee voo! / You might forget the gas and shell, / but you’ll never forget the Mademoiselle, / hinky dinky parlee voo! ’ ” Head up, chest out, I tramped in place to make the point. Jared’s expression said he remembered that anthem of soldiery all too well.
In the dim and shadowed light, expression among my other listeners was mostly limited to brows and eyeballs, and I could see some widened gazes by the time I registered a final ringing parlee voo!
After that died away, one of the most grizzled miners spoke up. “All them songs you been reaming our ears out with are for bunch-work, while we’re scattered just a few at a time in every mine on the Hill. So what kind of thing are you talking about that would ever fit us?”
“Mmm.” Inspiration is hard to produce on demand. “A work song does have to fit the job and its circumstances, you could not be more right,” I stalled. “In our instance here, now don’t hold me to this as a finished product, but perhaps something along the lines of—” Insidious as ever, the catchy rhythm of “Camptown Races” crept to mind, and in what I like to think of as a passable tenor voice, I improvised:
I’m a miner through and through; you too, you too!
We dig all day and nighttime too, in the Muckaroo!
Utter stillness met the finish of my performance. Eyebrows came down like dropping curtains, and I saw a wince on Griff. “That was merely one of many possible examples,” I offered up feebly. Shaking their heads, the miners began gathering themselves, lunchboxes were snapping shut—Jared looked as defeated as I felt. Any hope for a song for the union cause was walking out with these men.
“Wait!” The requisite bar for breaking treacherous slabs loose lay in a corner. Grabbing it up, I stepped front and center in the cavern and struck the ceiling as hard as I could.
The same high sweet tone that Griff had produced in our work-spot filled the cavern. Its clarion call halted everyone in mid-motion.
“There, hear that?” I hurried to capitalize on the frozen moment: “That sound—let us call it a musical note, because it has such a ring—is one you would know anywhere, any time of day or night, am I correct?” I noticed both Quinlan and the Cornishman now looking sharply interested, and other faces attentive as well. “The point is, the right kind of song stays in the mind that same way. It’s a melodic message that never wears out, in there. And that’s what I was