To add to my hasty post above: Some background: I first heard this song from my father in the late 1940s. He and my mother and their friends used to sing it on ski trips starting in the 1940s. They stayed in boardinghouses (motels then nearly unknown) around Mt. Mansfield, Stowe, NH, one of the best early ski resorts. Relatively few people skiied in those days—it was before the ski boom of the 60s and 70s—and there was a tradition of loud boisterous group singing in the evenings with drinks of various sorts including hot buttered rum and so on. So, for them, Quartermaster's Store was a "ski song." Rooting around, I found a version, the fullest (and second oldest) I know, given me by Adrian Chabot during basic training at Fort Dix, NJ in 1960. Some interesting variations: QUARTERMASTER"S STORE There are beans ... with snappers on their jeans ... Goons ... lined up in platoons ... Eggs ... with little bandy legs ... Lice ... eating up the mice Cats ... in bowler hats and spats Rats ... as big as alley cats Fleas ... with dimples in their knees Ants ... with people in their pants Beer ... that makes you feel so queer There are beds ... all laid out for the dead There is rye ... that makes you want to die There are whores ... lying on the floors There are broads ... all lined up in squads There is cheese ... that brings you to your knees
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