Dairyland Days: ‘Life gets tejus, don’t it?’

Editor’s Note: This is the first part in a series.

As we go through this hot and extremely dry summer of 2014, a tune from a record that my father played on the old phonograph keeps popping up in my mind.

I can date it back to a time prior to 1951 because of where the phonograph was positioned in the living room of our old farm house. We moved from that house in 1951, but the phonograph there was under the window on the left side of the couch.

The picture is in my mind. My dad put on the record, sat down on the couch and laughed while my brother and I sat on the floor listening. It was a wooden floor with a large rug in the middle. The carpet had a floral pattern.

It was a few years before we got our first look at television. The radio and phonograph were our family entertainment center. We spent many evenings seated on the floor listening to Jack Benny, Fibber McGee and Molly, Amos and Andy and we were tuned in at the close of the show to hear George Allen ask Gracie to say good night to the audience. She never did get it right as she always said “Good night George.”

We listened intently as Brer Fox chased Brer Rabbit into the brier patch. We laughed as the Rabbit mocked the Fox for his fear of the thorns in the brier patch.

Now back to the music, my dad laughing on the couch and brother, Larry, and I sitting on the floor as the comedic sound of a singing farmer playing the fiddle and singing the words,

“Oh, the sun comes up and the sun goes down. The hands on the clock go round and round. Life gets tejus, don’t it?

The cow’s gone dry and the hens won’t lay. Seems like it gets a little hotter day to day. Life gets tejus, don’t it?”

The song was the perfect description to the feeling you get after working day after day in the summer heat.

Then the word tejus made me wonder if I had heard the song or the pronouncement correctly. So, I got out my trusty old dictionary. There it is: “tejus,” a colloquial pronouncement of the word tedious. Sometimes in the repetitive heat of the summer days life gets tejus, don’t it?

There is another local or colloquial word that I have heard around town this year, but I doubt it will make the dictionary. It’s been “hot azell!” All summer. Possibly it is a word for the “Redneck Dictionary.”

The next verses talk about drought. The lines of the song paint a perfect picture of our summer.

“The water in the well is gettin’ lower, ain’t had a bath for a month or more, but I’ve heard and it’s probably true. Too much bathin’ will weaken you.

Open the door and the flies swarm in. Shut the door and I’m sweatin’ again. I moved too fast and cracked my shin. It’s one darn thing after another.

Life gets tejus , don’t it?

Shoe’s untied and I don’t care ’cause I ain’t goin’ nowhere. I’d have to wash and comb my hair and that’s just wasted effort.

There’s a mouse gnawin’ on the pantry door, fool’s been at it for a month or more. When he gets in he’ll sure be sore. Ain’t a dang thing in there.

Grief and misery, pains and woes, debt and taxes and so it goes. Now it seems, I’m gettin’ a cold in my nose. Life gets tasteless don’t it?”

The song was written and recorded by Carson Robison in 1948. A little research and I found that he was an songwriter and country recording artist in the 1930s and 1940s and was a regular on the “Grand Ole Opry” radio show.

This story was originally published September 25, 2014 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Dairyland Days: ‘Life gets tejus, don’t it?’."