Strange things happen to me while showering. Nice things, for the most part. I get good ideas for my writing, I sing a little, funny memories pour over me...that kind of good stuff. And, I get the added bonus of getting clean.
Well, this morning, it was something weirder than weird.
I started singing the Al Jolson song, "Toot Toot Tootsie".
And then I started analyzing the words.
The singer is really messed up. He's leaving on a train, away from his love. He promises to write every day but, if she doesn't get a letter from him, he's in jail.
Now, WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
Where is he going in the first place, is he running from the law? Since Jolson sang this song in The Jazz Singer, the first real talkie, he did it in black face, which might get him a good scolding nowadays, and enough humiliation to drive him off the charts. Deservedly so. But he sang in a different time and we have to take that into consideration.
So, this singer is going away by train, which is cool for the time. Nowadays it would have to be a plane for sure, but it just wouldn't be the same. "Leaving on a Jet Plane" doesn't have the same effect, though it has been known to make sorority sisters cry. He's on the lam, I bet, for something, but if he goes by train, chances are he can go somewhere small and never be found. His paper trail, the letters to his girlfriend, might catch him up, but in 1927, I don't know.
Times change.
The guy hopefully went away and came back to her. Unless he was some kind of traveling salesman and we know how bad they were...ask former President Clinton.
Anyway, the guy left his girl hanging there, expecting letters from him every day, kissing the daylights out of her.
Somehow, I hope she wasn't sitting around on her sofa waiting for him to come back to her, ya know?
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