"Old Folks at Home"

We are off to the Okeefenokee Swamp tomorrow morning.  The swamp is home to comic strip character Pogo.  You have to be a certain age to remember this comic strip.  Old would be best.

Hoss-Head [with fins on hips and an angry scowl]: Chonk back that catfish chile, Pogo, afore I whops you!

Pogo: Yassuree, Champeen Hoss-Head, yassuh yassuh yassuh yassuh yassuh... [tosses baby fish back in water]

Pogo [walks away, muttering discontentedly]: Things gettin' so humane 'round this swamp, us folks will have to take up eatin' MUD TURKLES!

Churchy (a turtle) [eavesdropping from behind a tree with Howland Owl]: Horroars! A cannibobble! [passes out]

Howland [holding the unconscious Churchy]: You say you gone eat mud turkles! Ol' Churchy is done overcame!

Pogo: It was a finger of speech—I apologize! Why, I LOVES yo', Churchy LaFemme!

Churchy [suddenly recovered from his swoon]: With pot licker an' black-eye peas, you loves me, sir—HA! Us is through, Pogo!

Now that I have added to your cultural aptitude we will move on.

We will be staying at Stephen Foster State Park which is the only campground in a park about the size of Rhode Island.  We will be in the Georgia side of the swamp.  We will be spending 3 or 4 days there, but that is only a wild estimate.  We've doubled the time spent in the last two places because we didn't want to leave.  So who knows how long we will be in the "Swamp".

The park is named after the composer of the Florida state song, "Old Folks at Home".  Here's a little information about him.

Stephen C. Foster wrote "The Swanee River (Old Folks at Home)" in 1851.  Foster is reported to have chosen the term "Swanee" because its two-syllable cadence fit nicely into the music he had composed. The composer was not familiar with the Florida section of the Suwannee River, because he never visited the state.

"Old Folks at Home"

 

Way down upon the Suwannee River,
Far, far away,
There’s where my heart is turning ever,
There’s where the old folks stay.

 All up and down the whole creation,
Sadly I roam,
Still longing for my childhood station,
And for the old folks at home.

Chorus
All the world is sad and dreary
Everywhere I roam.
O dear ones, how my heart grows weary,
Far from the old folks at home.

2nd verse
All ‘round the little farm I wander’d,
When I was young;
Then many happy days I squander’d,
Many the songs I sung.

 When I was playing with my brother,
Happy was I.
Oh, take me to my kind old mother,
There let me live and die.

3rd verse
One little hut among the bushes,
One that I love.
Still sadly to my memory rushes,
No matter where I rove.

 When will I see the bees a humming,
All ‘round the comb?
When shall I hear the banjo strumming,
Down in my good old home.

We will miss our early morning alarm clocks.

We are not sure we will have any cellular coverage in the next several days from deep in the swamp.  If I don't write, I have not been eaten by a gator, I am not trying out for the TV show "Swamp People" nor have we been carried off by mosquitoes. 

Life is good.