PADUTCH-LIFE-L Archives

From: "Vee L. Housman" <>
Subject: 55-College Boys
Date: Sat, 19 Sep 1998 15:35:07 -0400

COLLEGE BOYS

When I was going to school it was understood that we'd be
getting some school learning, and in addition we'd take in some
common sense. Nowadays this is no longer the case. Now, the
first thing that the professors in colleges want to know is how far
you can jump, how well you can play ball, and how long you can
wear your hair before it impairs your view. It seems the next lesson
is the “College Yell,” and the first thing you know the students are
standing with mouths open wide as a hungry pigeon chick, yelling
like a Holenner:

Zip! Bang! Boom!
Ray! Ray! Rah!
Hinkle Tzae un Reeva Blude [chicken teeth and red beet
blood]
Grudda Hore un Dowva Millich [frog hair and pigeon milk].
Epsilorum, Boof!

and all such darned nonsense which no one understands, even
though everyone knows the students will make fools out of
themselves. Society looks on and says, "Our youth are sowing their
wild oats." But the trouble is they're sowing their oats so deep that
it's rotting in the soil. After they've been away from home for a half
year they've learned as much as a snotnose can learn to respectfully
insult others, and they think it clever to take advantage of poor,
innocent girls about their clothes and to tease elder people about
their mistakes. They all smoke big pipes because it makes them
look tough, and when they ride in cars they'll spread out over two
seats even though tired mothers carrying babies may have standing
room only.

Now tell me, do they learn these things from their school
books? If they do, wouldn't it be a good plan to take up a
collection for buying new books that would teach something about
how to behave in company? It really seems like the fellow who can
talk the loudest, smoke the stinkiest pipe, and grow the longest hair
is most emulated by the rest. They justify these peculiarities by
saying that students need some kind of activity. Perhaps, but why
don't they engage in a useful activity like sawing wood to make
fence posts? But that's too much like work.

But this is not the rule just for our young men. Look at our
young women. Years back they had to learn baking, ironing,
knitting and washing laundry. Now they stitch gowns, embroider,
and sew ruffles and flourishes that just don't keep you warm but are
a darned nuisance. When they marry, the first thing they need is a
maid--or maybe two. One for the housework and the other for
tending to their persons. If the husband doesn't own a bank, he'd
have to keep his nose to the grindstone until she came to the
conclusion that she married a man who couldn't keep her. The next
step is the divorce court with the devil laughing over the fistful of
pudding that he holds.

Under these conditions I'd suggest that the colleges develop a
postgraduate course to teach the students common sense. This idea
came to me the other day when Sammy Mulbarger came home from
college. The little devil was gone off to school for four years.
Mike, his father, only ever owned one suit of clothes the whole time
that his boy was attending school, and for three years his mother
strayed no further from home than Gretzinger's Crossroads, since
she didn't have any decent clothing for traveling.

Sammy is an only child. He was once a pleasant young man,
but college filled his head so full of learning that no room was left
for common sense, and the first thing he wanted to do was criticize
his father for speaking poor English and tell his mother how
ashamed he was to have his college chums come to visit in such a
low class neighborhood. He picked up all his mail in
Schweffletown, two miles away, because, he said, the Rabbit
Mountain post office was too "insignificant." He pretended not to
know any of the children with whom he grew up and who he spent
so many Sunday School classes chasing bumblebee nests. In fact all
he'd do is sit under a shade tree the whole day long reading novels,
his finger nails polished, smoking a pipe, and keeping his long hair
out of his eyes.

His father asked me for advice concerning how to handle the
boy. I went outside to the corner of his house and stood for a long
time watching him under the shade tree. Then I came back in to
give him this advice, "Grab him and tie him on a carpenter's bench
like you would a female sheep. Then get a hedge shears and
remove the fur from his head, cutoff his long fingernails and make
him eat them, slip a working shirt over his head and a pair overalls
over his legs, turn his face towards the cornfield then stand yourself
behind him with a horsewhip and yell:

Zip! Ban! Boom!
Rah! Rah! Rah!
Chicken teeth and red beet blood,
Frog hair and pigeon milk.
Epsilorum, Boof!

and if he doesn't rake, club him in the flank, and I assure you your
troubles will be at an end.

The next morning before I even rose I could hear old Mike
giving the college yell as the team got started for the cornfield. The
next day I asked Mike how things went and he said, "Boonastiel,
you are a philosopher. My Sam took the postgraduate course,
relearned everything that he'd forgotten in the past four years, and
saved me from having to hire additional help. What do you think?
Should we start a postgraduate course here at Rabbit Mountain to
break in stubborn oxen?”

* * *

Note: This collection of Boonastiel stories was written by H. A.
Harter in the original Penna-Dutch dialect and were published in the
Keystone Gazette, Bellefonte, PA, between 1894 and 1904. They
were translated and transcribed by Bob James of Alaska and they
are being posted to this PADUTCH-LIFE mailing list with his
permission.

This thread:

• 55-College Boys by "Vee L. Housman" <>