The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #66007   Message #1092162
Posted By: GUEST,Tinker in Chicago
13-Jan-04 - 05:06 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: For the Man of Extinction (Mitchell Trio)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Hammacher Schlemmer Poem
Working solely form an aging memory, I can offer at least part of it. It's by E.Y. Harburg (the lyricist from "The Wizard of Oz" and "Finian's Rainbow" and "Brother Can You Spare a Dime?") and is included on an old Mitchell Trio album whose name escapes me (it was their first as The Mitchell Trio instead of The Chad Mitchell Trio but Chad was still in the group).
The reference to "shelter" means a fall-out shelter, and what I remember is this:

Hammacher Schlemmer is selling a shelter worth of Kubla Khan's Xanadu dome,
plushy and swanky with (hot?) hanky-panky that affluent Yankees can really call home.
Hammacher Schleemer is selling a shelter, all chromium kitchens and rubber-tiled (floors?),
Electric devices for facing a crisis with frozen fruit ices and cinema shows.
What a great come-to-glory emporium, to enjoy a deluxe moratorium,
where nuclear heat can beguile the elite in a
creme-de-la-creme crematorium!