jump down turn around

Rock Island Line led to other Lead Belly tunes (including "Hitler Blues").
Led to song called
"Pick a Bale of Cotton" --
--------------it's such a curious feeling / sensation to hear something you haven't heard since you were in high school,
or middle school,
or grade school,
or before you were ever in school,
and have not thought of
since.
(this keeps happening to me, with You Tube)
----------------------------the Remembrance comes out of your own mind, and heart, and you really forgot it was there. It's like --
opening your purse and finding you have $500,000 in there that you forgot about,
or
like --
I cannot name it.
am all out of descriptions
------------------------
"Pick a bale of Cotton":
a song -- you can find a variety of renditions on You Tube
it's a classic of Lead Belly; the
Lonnie Donegan version
tripped a sleeping flower in my brain files to wake up and it's like looking into
a television set
and seeing myself, knowing that other little kids & I
learned to sing this song--
and it was before I was in kindergarten
AND -- have not thought of it, or heard the song, since --

that appreciation and love which many middle class Americans had for the folk music of 50s / early 60s got sort of closed down and hidden away in the face of
advancing wave of
psychedelic rock
protest marches
sit-ins
riots
uncertainty about the war
controversy about a variety of social issues and customs
drugs
three assassinations
...was like, the happy, bouncy Folk music kind of
didn't express all that, and it got set aside
like white shoes after labor day.
People needed boots.

and anyway, hearing this unbelievably peppy, soaring version of
"Pick a bale..."
by Lonnie Donegan
gave me the gift of Remembering, and Totally Knowing
that at a pre-kindergarten age, I learned, with other children, to sing this,
and -- as I listen now, to

"Jump down, turn around, pick a bale of cotton;
jump down, turn around, pick a bale a day"

I know for a sure thing
(LOL)
that back then, I was singing,
"Jump down, turn around, pick a bale of cotton;
jump down, turn around, pick a bale of hay" - !!
--- (instead of bale-a-day...)

[what was I doing?? proposing diversification in the agricultural sector of the economy,
at the age of 4?
...just messing up the words - !]

-30-