yes, we have no banana's

"Yes, we have no bananas
We have-a no bananas today.
We've string beans, and onions
Cabbageses, and scallions,
And all sorts of fruit and say
We have an old fashioned to-mah-to
A Long Island po-tah-to
But yes, we have no bananas.
We have no bananas today." (Yes We have no Banana’s/Frank Silver-Irving Cohn)

Yep, I was of the generation that trudged a few miles to school, never had to shoot polar bears along the way or hike up or down chasms so deep that Mt Everest seemed a mere hill, but we hit the road on foot, for at least a 35 minutes’ walk and started our school day. (The only time we ever had a car ride, was during Pittsburgh’s torrential rains, and then Aunt Ruthie, the only neighborhood mother, who drove, would pile in all 8 kids living in our row of houses and perilously drive us. No seat belts, that terrible defroster odor which added to the cigarette fumes which arose from the cigarette Aunt Ruthie smoked to calm her nerves from driving all of us! The young siblings sitting on the laps of their older siblings (all cootie shots were required before this could happen), three kids piled up front and five in the back.) But prior to leaving for school, my mother would make us breakfast, and if that day, we were out of some wondrous sugar-filled cereal, or not enough white bread for toast and we had to eat toasted rye bread, my mother would sing to us, “Yes we have no bananas,” and remind us that kids were starving both in China and a place called Appalachia, so what is wrong with Cron Flakes anyway! At the time the song made little sense, but to this day, I miss our little kitchen with a table only able to seat two people with the remainder of the space reserved for all the paper shopping bags from the Star Market and lacking much shelving, all of the groceries stacked in place.

When we were a bit older and had the kind of conversations you first approach your aging parents, with, the easy chats of why did we do this or why did that happen, my sister and I asked why she chose Yes We Have No Banana’s, as her just eat breakfast and stop complaining song. It was, she replied a song from the days of the Depression, a song which insisted ignore the obvious and go with the flow. If you said yes, then the NO part was less stressful.  It made sense, and there was a philosophy about it, that if you gave it time resonated with a deeper meaning. That was then, the YES, but no, seemed cute, a kind of con, but a con with good intentions.

But here we are in 2020, and CON is KING, and DOUBLE SPEAK the native language of the Republican Party, and its THUG named TRUMP, and, anything that sounds good is said, to cover everything that is bad. YES, we have NO testing for COVID, because too much testing might prove there are too many infected, which in turn may require attention and that YES immediate attention is necessary, but NO, don’t you dare do that, because numbers of deaths or cases might arise, and YES we would have a better handle on handling this Pandemic, but NO, that would mean real factual evidence-based prognosis that TRUMP has failed yet again in any kind of leadership role.  I use the example of testing and tracing as just one perfect storm and have always been told by my high school English teachers, one should always provide the reader with three examples, to help prove a point. But for today, as I hum “Yes We Have No Banana’s,” and reminisce those days never to be repeated in real life, just the life of my memory, I will end my post and make my point, using one BLATANT and to quote Trump, a TREMENDOUS example of self-serving versus serving others!