Category: General Nonsense || By

I'm still buried under preparation for the International Village broadcast, so here's another "pearl" of "wisdom" from the Tube City Almanac archives. This entry originally appeared Jan. 28, 2005:

Jan. 28, 2005

Owner of a No-Track Mind

I can't remember my own phone number, where I put my brown sportcoat, or to get my wage tax payment in on time. But I can remember a piece of doggerel from a column that Peter Leo wrote in the Post-Gazette 20-odd years ago. And every time I see a salt truck, my brain coughs it up:

Over hill, over dale,
We will hit the snowy trail,
When the salt trucks go rolling along.
Hitch a ride, take the bus,
Even walking's dangerous,
When the salt trucks go rolling along.
For it's hi! Hi! Hey!
Here we are on the Parkway,
Hope you brought a change of clothes along.
If we weren't such boobs,
We'd have detoured 'round the tubes,
When the salt trucks went rolling along.

Then, last night, someone mentioned the '70s pop singer Phoebe Snow to me.

I replied: "Phoebe Snow was wont to go by railroad train to Buffalo. Her gown stays white from noon 'til night, upon The Road of Anthracite."

"How's that again?" he said.

"Phoebe Snow was an advertising character created for the old Lackawanna Railroad at the turn of the century," I said. "That was one of the little poems they created to go with the advertisements." I searched Google for "Phoebe Snow" and "Lackawanna" and within a few seconds had pulled up an entire page of Phoebe Snow rhymes.

"I assume that's where the singer Phoebe Snow got her name," I said. "The railroad's gimmick was that they burned hard anthracite coal, which didn't make as much soot, so people's clothes stayed cleaner."

My friend looked at me with astonishment. "How do you know this? Did you have to memorize this for school or something?"

"Um ... no. I just read it years ago, and it stuck with me."

I can't help it! Tell me something important, and you might as well be telling it to a brain-damaged poodle.

Give me some useless information, and it burrows into my noggin forever, such as the facts that there is no Winky's in Wilmerding; Y-97FM is where the Three Rivers Come to a Y; First National Bank of McKeesport became Western Pennsylvania National Bank, which became Equibank, which merged with Integra Bank and now the whole shootin' match is National City; or that to load a file off of the disc drive of a Commodore 64, you had to type LOAD "filename", 8,1.

(If you forgot to type the "8,1" the computer would think you were trying to load a program from a cassette, and would prompt: "PRESS PLAY ON TAPE." Typing "POKE 53281" and then a number would change the color of the screen.)

What in the name of the Great Gildersleeve (a character originated on radio by Harold Peary, who ultimately left the show in a contract dispute ... arrgh! I'm doing it again) is the use of any of that trivia?

I'll be sitting in a chair, minding my own damn business, when some dusty cog in my brain will slip into gear, and this will tumble out:

Happiest drivers in the world,
Don't say Olds, say Bendik Olds!
Get complete full-service care,
Don't say Olds, say Bendik Olds!
Ardmore Boulevard in Wilkinsburg,
That's the place!
You'll find satisfaction, so,

Put on a happy face, and remember,
Don't say Olds, say Bendik Olds!
Don't say Olds, say Bendik Olds!
Don't say Olds,
Make it a Bendik Olds!

"You have a mind like a steel trap," my friend said.

"Yep," I said, "nothing gets in, and nothing gets out."