Two stanzas from the lyrics stand out to me, especially since I recently looked at the idealistic rhetoric happening in state mottoes. Here are the lines I've latched onto:
Over there all the women wear silk and satin to their knees.
And children, dear, the sweets, I head, are growing on the trees.
Gold comes rushing out the rivers straight into your hands
When you make your home in the American land.
There's diamonds in the sidewalk, the gutters lined in song.
Dear, I hear that beer flows through the faucets all night long.
There's treasure for the taking, for any hard working man
Who'll make his home in the American land.
It's poetic hyperbole for a purpose, but it strikes me as reminiscent of the song "Big Rock Candy Mountain" made popular by the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack.
See the lyrics of that song below:
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
By Harry McClintock
One evening as the sun went down
And the jungle fires were burning,
Down the track came a hobo hiking,
And he said, "Boys, I'm not turning,
I'm headed for a land that's far away
Besides the crystal fountains.
So come with me, we'll go and see
The Big Rock Candy Mountains.
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains,
There's a land that's fair and bright,
Where the handouts grow on bushes
And you sleep out every night.
Where the boxcars all are empty
And the sun shines every day
And the birds and the bees
And the cigarette trees
The lemonade springs
Where the bluebird sings
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
All the cops have wooden legs
And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth
And the hens lay soft-boiled eggs
The farmers' trees are full of fruit
And the barns are full of hay
Oh I'm bound to go
Where there ain't no snow
Where the rain don't fall
The winds don't blow
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
You never change your socks
And the little streams of alcohol
Come trickling down the rocks
The brakemen have to tip their hats
And the railway bulls are blind
There's a lake of stew
And of whiskey too
You can paddle all around it
In a big canoe
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains,
The jails are made of tin.
And you can walk right out again,
As soon as you are in.
There ain't no short-handled shovels,
No axes, saws nor picks,
I'm bound to stay
Where you sleep all day,
Where they hung the jerk
That invented work
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.
I'll see you all this coming fall
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
So what am I getting at here, you might thinkin'. The song by Springsteen presents how the US was and, to a degree, still is presented as a land to opportunity, a place of unbounded wealth, a state of beneficent grace.
As Springsteen tersely relates in two of the latter stanzas of his song, here's the upshot:
The McNicholas, the Posalskis, the Smiths, Zerillis too
The Blacks, the Irish, Italians, the Germans and the Jews
They come across the water a thousand miles from home
With nothing in their bellies but the fire down below.
They died building the railroads, they worked to bones and skin.
They died in the fields and factories, names scattered in the wind.
They died to get here a hundred years ago, they're still dying now
Their hands that built the country we're always trying to keep out. (italics mine)
Though not about America as a whole, McClintock's song, as far as I can tell, is depicting the idealization of the West (see California's "Eureka") via a hobo's dream.
In fact, Wallace Stegner reportedly got the title of his novel from the song. It's the same novel Wendell Berry uses as a launching point to discuss the "Boomer" and "Sticker" mindsets of American culture in one of his fine essays I read years ago, and it's one that has stuck with me.
Berry also presented these competing mindsets in his Jefferson Lecture, which is one of the nation's highest prizes for "distinguished intellectual and public achievement in the humanities" awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The essay/lecture is titled "It All Turns on Affection."
It is recommended reading.
But getting back to the song for today, a song that hit #1 on the country music charts in 1939, I think it's my favorite on the O Brother soundtrack, and I suspect it was a big if not a singular influence on Springsteen's song even though the Boss wraps his composition in Irish-Gaelic musical stylings.
As for me, I'm dreaming of lemonade springs, bluebirds singing, lakes full of Maker's Mark, and sleeping all day.
I want to find that place.
Oh, and here's the song.
It's poetic hyperbole for a purpose, but it strikes me as reminiscent of the song "Big Rock Candy Mountain" made popular by the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack.
See the lyrics of that song below:
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
By Harry McClintock
One evening as the sun went down
And the jungle fires were burning,
Down the track came a hobo hiking,
And he said, "Boys, I'm not turning,
I'm headed for a land that's far away
Besides the crystal fountains.
So come with me, we'll go and see
The Big Rock Candy Mountains.
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains,
There's a land that's fair and bright,
Where the handouts grow on bushes
And you sleep out every night.
Where the boxcars all are empty
And the sun shines every day
And the birds and the bees
And the cigarette trees
The lemonade springs
Where the bluebird sings
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
All the cops have wooden legs
And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth
And the hens lay soft-boiled eggs
The farmers' trees are full of fruit
And the barns are full of hay
Oh I'm bound to go
Where there ain't no snow
Where the rain don't fall
The winds don't blow
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
You never change your socks
And the little streams of alcohol
Come trickling down the rocks
The brakemen have to tip their hats
And the railway bulls are blind
There's a lake of stew
And of whiskey too
You can paddle all around it
In a big canoe
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains,
The jails are made of tin.
And you can walk right out again,
As soon as you are in.
There ain't no short-handled shovels,
No axes, saws nor picks,
I'm bound to stay
Where you sleep all day,
Where they hung the jerk
That invented work
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.
I'll see you all this coming fall
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
So what am I getting at here, you might thinkin'. The song by Springsteen presents how the US was and, to a degree, still is presented as a land to opportunity, a place of unbounded wealth, a state of beneficent grace.
As Springsteen tersely relates in two of the latter stanzas of his song, here's the upshot:
The McNicholas, the Posalskis, the Smiths, Zerillis too
The Blacks, the Irish, Italians, the Germans and the Jews
They come across the water a thousand miles from home
With nothing in their bellies but the fire down below.
They died building the railroads, they worked to bones and skin.
They died in the fields and factories, names scattered in the wind.
They died to get here a hundred years ago, they're still dying now
Their hands that built the country we're always trying to keep out. (italics mine)
Though not about America as a whole, McClintock's song, as far as I can tell, is depicting the idealization of the West (see California's "Eureka") via a hobo's dream.
In fact, Wallace Stegner reportedly got the title of his novel from the song. It's the same novel Wendell Berry uses as a launching point to discuss the "Boomer" and "Sticker" mindsets of American culture in one of his fine essays I read years ago, and it's one that has stuck with me.
Berry also presented these competing mindsets in his Jefferson Lecture, which is one of the nation's highest prizes for "distinguished intellectual and public achievement in the humanities" awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The essay/lecture is titled "It All Turns on Affection."
It is recommended reading.
But getting back to the song for today, a song that hit #1 on the country music charts in 1939, I think it's my favorite on the O Brother soundtrack, and I suspect it was a big if not a singular influence on Springsteen's song even though the Boss wraps his composition in Irish-Gaelic musical stylings.
As for me, I'm dreaming of lemonade springs, bluebirds singing, lakes full of Maker's Mark, and sleeping all day.
I want to find that place.
Oh, and here's the song.
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