‘Happy Birthday,’ sung in 30-part disharmony, is sincere

DUANESBURG — This Tuesday, Sept. 25, we gathered at Chris’s Chuck Wagon Diner in Duanesburg. That is kind of confusing to some of us because right across Route 20 is the Princetown Evangelical Presbyterian Church. Maybe Route 20 is the boundary between Princetown and Duanesburg.

If you think that is a little confusing, how about Gibby’s Diner, also in Duanesburg, or is it in Quaker Street, just next down the street on the Duanesburg Road (Route 7) from the Quaker Street Volunteer Fire Department?

Not a problem; the OMOTM know where the good food is and we never make a mistake as to where we are supposed to be.

When we entered The Chuck Wagon, we were greeted with our usual cups of coffee. Sometimes the coffee arrives at our seats before we do.

Ron knows where we sit because we are creatures of habit and pretty much sit at the same table, in the same chair, every time. At any rate, this week, we were also greeted with a couple of birthday cards to sign.

Another young man is celebrating his birthday! This particular young man was probably in the Army when I was born, and I am 81 years old.

Elwood Vanderbilt has had “Happy Birthday” sung to him 97 times, but never as poorly sung as what occurred this time! The OMOTM are a lot of things, and we do many of them very well. Singing, however, is not one of them. We are awful.

Number one, we can’t find the right note with both hands; number two, we don't even start at the same time. No, this is not a 30-part harmony, and for those who can find the right note, it is hard to sing it on key with a mouth full of delicious pancakes.

But three things in our favor: one, we are enthusiastic; two, we know the words (we all have heard them just a few times); and we are sincerely happy for one of our own. Happy birthday, Elwood!

In addition to all that, Chris, the owner, and Ron, the coffee man, and the rest of the crew at the Chuck Wagon provided us with a birthday cake to help with our celebration. Of course, we were alone at the time because all the regular customers at the Wagon fled in terror when we started to sing.

One of our OFs, when asked about his singing abilities, replied that he must have “missed school the day they taught singing!”

Raising cane

We did welcome back another one of our own, who just had a hip-replacement operation and is looking good. In fact, he was insisting that his cane was, in fact, really the hind leg bone of an ancient and now extinct sub group directly related to today's llamas.

He claims he found this old leg bone while on safari in Africa, which is a good trick since llamas are found in South America. That’s OK, because this particular OF is a politician and sometimes is known to mix up his tall tales.

Besides that, his cane looked a lot more like the bone from the right front leg of an alpaca that died of old age from a ranch in Colorado in the 1700s.

Doodlebugs

Last week, we talked about “doodlebugs” — what they were, why they were, how they were made and by whom. Well, that story sort of continued down a couple of different paths this week.

To refresh last week’s information about what they were: They were homemade farm tractors made from just about anything that ran with a combustion engine. Regular farm tractors were in short supply so the farmers took any old car and modified the heck out of it and created a serviceable farm tractor.

That’s the short version of what they were, who made them, and why.

This week, some stories about some of the fun and games that developed around these doodlebugs were passed around. They indeed were used for the purpose they were made for, and did a good job of it.

Just about every OMOTM who grew up on the family farm here in the Hilltowns had a doodlebug or knew all about them. Regular readers of this column know full well that this scribe didn’t grow up on a farm here in the Hilltowns and therefore certainly didn’t know anything about a doodlebug.

As y’all also know, he has a tendency to ask his friend, Mr. Google, about nearly anything. So he did.

The first thing he found out is that there is a bug that, when it crawls around, leaves a trail behind it that, when observed, looks pretty much like someone’s doodles. Thus, the doodlebug.

This wasn’t what this scribe was expecting and he dug a little deeper and found the slang version of the doodlebug described last week. OK, that was better. This week brought forth some tales of some of the other uses and experiences having to do with the bug.

One of these was really just an extension of one of the jobs on the farm that the doodlebugs did, and that was pulling or carrying stuff from here to there. Not too surprising, somebody would say that his bug was faster, or stronger, or whatever, so naturally some friendly competition was initiated, complete with rules and everything.

How much weight could your doodlebug drag? Your front wheels couldn’t lift off the ground; you could only go fast; etc. Wintertime sports involving ice and snow, these men knew how to work hard and they knew how to play hard as well.

Not much has changed, except there are not many doodlebugs around anymore, except for the kind that leaves a trail behind, like a doodle.

Time to doodle over to the attendance list for this week: Wally Guest, Harold Guest, George Washburn, Pete Whitbeck, Jim Austin, Frank A. Fuss, Wm Lichliter, Wayne Gaul, Ted Feurer, Marty Herzog, J. Darrah, Jake Herzog, Roger Shafer, Mark Traver, Joe Rack, Warren Willsey, Russell Pokorny, Gerry Chartier, Paul Guiton, Rev. Jay Francis, Lou Schenck, John Dab, Jack Norray, Dick Dexter, John Jaz, Gerry Cross, Elwood Vanderbilt, Bob Donnelly, Dave Hodgetts, Herb Bahrmann, and me.