During the 1930s, ’40s, and early ’50s, many farm papers published a feature called The Song of the Lazy Farmer, but the author of this on-going feature was never identified. I featured a good many of the old rhymes in this space a number of years ago, but ran out of them in 2017. A while back, I discovered a few more from the spring of 1950.
The lazy farmer wasn’t the only ne’er-do-well in the agricultural papers and magazines back in those days. Peter Tumbledown tormenting his hard-working and long-suffering wife was a comic strip that appeared regularly in Farm Journal magazine, and other publications as well. Then there was Ben Puttin-it-off and his perpetually angry wife, Marthy, whose misadventures appeared in Farm Life magazine in the form of letters to the editor.
The following example of the Lazy Farmer from the American Agriculturist‘s March 4th edition of 1950 is one in which the Lazy Farmer does a bit of philosophizing about the world situation. His solutions to the world’s craziness probably seemed somewhat naïve even then, but nearly seventy-five years later, in the tumultuous world of 2024, they’re downright laughable.
The Song of the Lazy Farmer
If you don’t think humanity
is just as queer as it can be,
and see the crazy things some folks do.
Seems ev’ryone is worrying
for fear some new and awful thing,
like atom bomb or dread disease,
will kill them sooner than they please.
And still, if what I read is so,
them folks are rushing to and fro,
a-meeting death in accidents
because they do not drive with sense.;
or else they take a slug of pills
to cure imaginary ills,
and then slam around the whole durn night
and wonder why they don’t feel just right.
Why should we do things in such a rush,
with sweaty brow and face that’s flushed?
It seems to me the world’s berserk,
the way most people like to work
and stew and fret until they’re sick,
no wonder ulcers are so thick.
There’s nothin’ ails the world today
that can’t be treated best my way,
if ev’ryone would just slow down
and not go runnin’ off to town
or get up at the crack of dawn
to wear out both their brains and brawn.
I never heard of any war
that started at the kitchen door
between two fellers full of pie
who only want soft spots upon which to lie.
Then, from March 18, we see a highlight of Mirandy and the Lazy farmer’s relationship.
Mirandy’s upset ’cause I’m not
excited, bothered and red hot,
about the fact that spring is near
and field work time is almost here.
She thinks that I should be out right now
to put a shine upon the plow;
she’d have me work ’til I’m half-dead
a-pullin’ stuff from out the shed
to make sure that it’s in repair
and greased and oiled up everywhere.
She’s worried ’cause the oats ain’t fanned
and where to sow them ain’t been planned;
apparently she thinks I ought
to have my fertilizer bought,
and she complains to beat the band
’cause all the seed is not on hand.
I’ve tried to tell her it’s a crime
to worry so ahead of time;
it don’t make sense to jump the gun
before the winter is half done.
Why right here in the almanac
it says we might as well sit back
and take it easy ’cause this spring
is going to be late, by jing.
It says there’ll hardly be a day
that’s fit to work ’til almost May,
there will be more snow this month yet
and all of April will be wet.
And so, despite Mirandy’s cracks,
I guess I might as well relax,
because there is a month left yet
before I need to get upset.
In 1950, when these were published, I was a 16-year-old high-school student with my head full of cars and girls. Even though folks were building atomic-bomb proof shelters in their back yards and a bloody war was about to break out on the Korean peninsula, it seems, in retrospect at least, to have been a much simpler, easier, and more enjoyable time.
Sam Moore
