The conversation went like this. We were walking back from lunch, and I noticed the grass getting long (and remembered how ours needs cutting). I said to Ken: “So, have you cut your grass yet?” It turns out he hasn’t needed to, for reasons involving lack of sun in the front yard and kids running around in the back yard. “But,” he says, “I think I need to get my mower blade sharpened first.” And then he wonders out loud whether it’s steel. I say, “What else could it be, aluminum?” He says, “I was thinking plastic.” He was half-serious. It’s an electric mower, which he considers a toy almost.
Then, after a pause, he says:
I bought a wooden whistle, but it wouldn’ whistle. So I bought a steel whistle, and it stiiill wouldn’ whistle. So I bought a tin whistle, and now I t’n whistle.
It had the goofy sound of something a dad would say, and he said he thinks that’s where he heard it.
It reminded me of a rhyme my dad would always recite around this time of year, back in northern Ohio—in his rendering:
Spring has sprung,
The grass is riz.
I wonder where
The robins is.
I did some Googling recently and found what must be the canonical version:
Spring in the Bronx
Spring is sprung,
Duh grass is riz
I wonder where dem boidies is.Duh little boids is on duh wing—
But dat’s absoid:
Duh little wing is on duh boid.
Penned by that prolific bard Anon, it can be found in Comic Poems (Everyman’s Library), according to this source.
Well, that sprang loose another bit of rhymed nonsense from Ken, channeling his dad. After hearing it, I wondered whether it, too, could be found in the aforementioned collection. At any rate, here it is:
One bright day in the middle of the night
Two dead boys got up to fight.
Back to back they faced each other,
Drew their swords and shot each other.
A deaf policeman heard the noise
And came and shot those two dead boys.
If you don’t believe this lie is true,
Ask the blind man—he saw it too.
