When I was a kid, our house seemed vast.
I'd come home after school, and it would be quiet, still.
I knew Mom was in there somewhere, so I'd call out to her.
"MOM! ARE YOU UPSTAIRS?"
The reply would come, "Nobody here but us chickens."
When you're a kid, you don't think too much about the weird things your parents say. "Nobody here but us chickens" isn't any stranger than "See you later, Alligator," or any of a million other catchphrases.
But you get a little older and you realize that nobody else's Mom says "Nobody here but us chickens," so you ask:
"Mom, where does 'Nobody here but us chickens' come from?"
"I don't know. It's something my Mom used to say."
It was years after that, when I was listening to an oldies, "years of our lives" type radio station, that the mystery was solved.
"Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens" is a song, recorded by Louis Jordan the year my Mom was born!
When my 3 year old girl is running around the house, over-sugared, over-tired, over-the-edge, she shouts:
"I'M GETTING CRAZY WITH THE CHEESE WHIZ."
I taught her that.
She doesn't know where it comes from or who wrote it or anything. She just knows it's something her Dad says.
In 2058, there will be a conversation. My daughter will have grown kids of her own, who used to say, "I'm getting crazy with the Cheese Whiz," too.
And those grown kids will say to their mother, my now-50-year-old daughter:
"Mom, did you know that comes from a song from some guy named Beck!?!"
The lyric is at the 2:15 mark.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
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This song came out when I first moved to Houston. It came on the radio when one of mexicano friends was riding in the truck with me. He wasn't paying much attention until Beck sang "Soy un perdedor," and my friend said "He just said in Spanish that he's a loser." I said "Yes, and he said it in English right after. He wants us all to get it." That friend and I used to say to each other "I'm getting crazy with the Cheese Whiz" all the time. Thanks for the memory bubble.
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