"Yes! We Have No Bananas" is a novelty song by Frank Silver and Irving Cohn published July 19, 1923. Frank Silver explained the origin of the song to Time Magazine: "I am an American, of Jewish ancestry, with a wife and a young son. About a year ago my little orchestra was playing at a Long Island hotel. To and from the hotel I was wont to stop at a fruit stand owned by a Greek, who began every sentence with 'Yess.' The jingle of his idiom haunted me and my friend Cohn. Finally, I wrote this verse and Cohn fitted it with a tune."The song was the theme of the outdoor relief protests in Belfast in 1932. These were a unique example of Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland protesting together, and the song was used because it was one of the few non-sectarian songs that both communities knew. The song lent its title to a book about the depression in Belfast. The term has been resurrected on many occasions, including during rationing in the United Kingdom inWorld War II when the British government banned imports of bananas for five years. Shop owners put signs stating "Yes, we have no bananas" in their shop windows in keeping with the war spirit. Wikipedia)
“Yes! We Have No Bananas”, is novelty song which was sung every Monday through Friday from the months of September through June 20, in my kitchen, during the morning hours of too early to wake up and do I have to go to school, by Rena Buncher, to her kids Bonnie, Gerry and Francie, to help motivate a group of three “I hate school” children, GET TO SCHOOL. It was the 50’s and even then as elementary school folk, my two siblings and I would beg for just one more hour of sleep. My mother would first say, YESS, you can not sleep in one more hour and go into her own rendition of “Yes! We Have No Bananas”, explaining that sometimes being positive about the negatives in life, did not make the bad stuff go away, but made the bad stuff sound nicer. (Even then, all three of us knew how to exactly roll our eyes as if we were Gloria Swanson in the movie ‘Sunset Boulevard, asking for her close up with Cecil B. DeMille. That only caused my mother to ask if we wanted more toast or cereal, or her concoction of a tiny bit of coffee and a whole lot of milk in a cup loving referred to as Milk Coffee, and maybe a piece of her home-made chocolate cake (YES, cake for breakfast, and ton of cavities to follow us throughout life). If we sighed a bit too much, then my mother would add one more favorite tune to her morning ditties, called, Barney Google. ( a song with its own history for another blog).
Let’s time travel to another time and another dimension (sound eerily like Rod Serling and the introduction of the Twilight Zone…but in reality, try and describe this era of history in any other terms). Now we have an idiots delight, a con artist, a Russian Asset, an Asshole, a Liar-In-Chief, and most of all a person UNABLE to EVER apologize, express his sheer ignorance and lack of intelligence, an inability to separate truth from fiction, calling facts false, and person who if not sitting in the Oval Office, of the once most powerful nation, would certainly, either be that homeless person, lying on the sidewalk, we have learned to ignore or at least not notice when a line of pee has fallen directly from his zipper to the cement, or someone for whom we might call the police and out of mercy ask he be taken to the hospital and hopefully seen by mental health professionals. Nuking Hurricanes, Hurricanes heading to Alabama because he drew imaginary magic markers on a map, throwing paper towels to the Hurricane survivors in Puerto Rico, swearing he was the guy who made things better, listening to another snake oil Evangelical Christian Taliban explaining that he as a Pastor spoke to Hurricane Dorian and said don’t come ashore to Florida, and off playing golf when the entire East Coast of this nation was and is in jeopardy of death and destruction. Huh!, What! And the Talking Heads, and the Entertainment Anchors of each and every Cable News show, still debate the issue that Trump might win the next election. And Pelosi and Schumer, STILL in RECESS STILL pretending that there is a sane man in the White House. I woke up today, not having to go to school, but the song, “Yes We Have No Bananas,” was recoiling in my brain, but the lyrics were more like, “Yes, We Have No Hurricanes.” Hey Ma, hopefully, there are no TV sets in Heaven!
