This is the first protest song I had ever heard. This version is a little pic-a-dic-a-die-do but my choices were limited on youtube. I was born in 1960 in the small town adjacent to a Big Ten campus. In those days this place had it’s finger on the pulse of America, sexual revolution, cultural revolution, encouragement to expand the mind with everything from hallucinogens to Eastern religions. Folks music and protest songs had it’s hey day.
Twenty years later in basic training the DI asked before the why-the-gas-mask-is-your-friend exercise if anyone had been tear gassed before. Like an idiot I raised my hand, “Yes, Sargent. In 169, 1970, 1971 and 1972” He asked why a kid got tear gassed so much. I told him I was on the roof of the bookstore watching the demonstrations. The four guys that went into the gas tent with me were pissed, pissed but curious. I kept from getting my assed kicked by telling the tales. Um, unlike everyone else who just had to take their masks off and say their names, we had to say our names, spell them backwards and do our social security forward and backwards.
The idea of group punishment is get to everyone to act as a team. The idea of the gas tent is to appreciate the difference between wearing a mask and not. Tear gas makes every exposed inch of skin feel like it’s burning, and, like the name suggests, causes tears and like the name implies, snot, and in general it’s a whole lot of no fun.
The irony didn’t escape me as a kid. Demonstrations for peace ended in chaotic violence. Not all of it was the police or national guards fault, after Kent State, the cops and guard were careful about lethal force.
Us Guardsmen’swere separated one afternoon in basic training to learn crowd control. I think they didn’t want the regular army guys to know how to do shit that wasn’t lethal. Wouldn’t have mattered anyhow, they don’t issue regular army batons and shields. When the other guys in the platoon asked where we went, we told them it was CIA recruitment and asked if they were aware of any un-American activities on base.
Though we had different upbringings we were all mostly of the same age and time. Most of us had enlisted to avoid being drafted. With Reagun in the white house we had, each on his own, reason to suspect a draft was not far behind.
When there was down time we would sing. Mostly we sang protest songs. There’s a lot of singing in general in basic training, most of it is to keep a uniform beat and regulate breath. Marching songs like “I don’t know but I been told, eskimaux pussy is mighty cold” are sung from the diaphragm at a uniform trot; it gives the voice more power, less strain, and allows the lungs to breathe at a regulated pace.
I was certainly behind the bell curve on tonal quality with my singing, but I knew the words to a hell of a lot of songs.
Incidentally pardon the vulgarity and misdirection and implied bigotry. There is no such tribe as eskimaux (word hates that spelling but it doesn’t matter, it’s like the word Indian, a mistake) but the nomadic people in the far north have regular temperatures to their genitals. It’s warmer inside one than outside one. Just saying. I’m sure if the US ever declared war on the Inuit they’d probably change that line to that song.
Yeah, ok, I’m spent.
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