Saturday Night Bath
Did you ever take yore Saturday bath
An' try to wash an' scrub
While squattin' down on yore haunches
In a galvanized washing tub?
If not, then you ain't missed a thing
But I'm telling you what's right.
I done it until I wus almost grown,
An' every doggone Saturday night!
In summertime it wuz bad enough,
But, in winter it wuz really rough,
Spreadin' paper, filling buckets an' kettles
An' all that sorta stuff !
But getting ready for that ordeal
Wuz only half o' the rub
Of takin' a bath on Saturday night
In a galvanized washin' tub.
Did you ever stand there stripped to the skin,
A woodstove bakin' yore hide,
A-dreadin to put yore dern foot in
For fear you'd burn alive?
Finally you got the temperature right
And into the tub you'd crawl,
That cold steel wud touch yore back,
An' you'd squeal like a fresh stuck hog!
You'd get outta the tub next to the stove
An' stand there drippin' and shakin',
The front o' your body's a freezin' to death
While the back o' yore body's bakin'.
That's the price I had to pay,
That awful ordeal will haunt me
Until I'm old an' gray.
I ain't through yet~there's somethin' else
That I been wantin' to say!
I wuz the youngest of all the kids
What bathed each Saturday.
Now we all bathed accordin' to age
An' I fell last in order!
Which meant I had to wash myself,
In their same dad-blamed water!
I'm a woman o' clean habits,
An' believe in a bath a week.
It helps to keep me clean an' healthy,
An' it freshens up my physique.
But if I had my druthers,
I'd druther eat a bug
Than to take my Saturday bath again
In a galvanized washin' tub!
~Song by Little Jimmy Dickens~
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