Down by the Bay.....

After the bus depot and o
n the ferry to Vancouver

Down by the bay……

The singsong voice of the smiling five year old girl with deep brown eyes and shiny black hair spun me all the way through decades from Victoria’s bus depot to many campfires in Saskatchewan - whether at Carlyle Lake or Lumsden Beach.

Where the watermelons grow……..

Is there a bay somewhere with watermelons growing or is this just nonsense that has carried word for word down the years, an oral history passed child to child, group leader to group leader and campfires in the prairies to bus depots in urbanity.

Back to my home I dare not go……

I have dared to go back home and am often saddened to see changes of time and circumstance…an old school gone, Main Street without the old Town Hall, grain elevators vanished all but one…..rather like looking in my mirror and seeing a face moulded by the same time, yet much different circumstance.  

For if I do, my mother would say…….

 I know she would say ‘Welcome home, honey!” and give me one of her wonderful huge hugs, but as the song goes……

“Did you ever see a whale with a ponytail
down by the bay…..”

I may not always be certain that memory will serve accurately, but in this case my confidence in memory is redeemed. This song continues for as many times as that last line can be changed. Again, rather like our faces and our hometowns changed with time and circumstance, it is with the joy of childhood.

and the verse I remember is:
 “Did you ever see a bear in his underwear
   down by the bay……”

“Strange, what brings these past things so vividly back to us, sometimes!”

~ Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin