Joe, Here are the lyrics to "Old Zeb." Thanks for asking. I Probably better get this to Digital Tradition...how do I do that?


OLD ZEB
(Larry Kaplan)

I'm not tired of the wind, I'm not weary of the sea,
But she's prob'ly had a bellyful of a damned old coot like me.
I'm going ashore, she's gone for better days,
But I'll see her topsail flyin' when I come down off the ways.

CHORUS:
Rosie, get my Sunday shoes,
Gertie get my walkin' cane;
We'll take another walk to see
Old Alice sail again.

I'd like to have a nickel for the men I used to know
Who could load three cord of lumber in half an hour or so.
Who could put on sail by hauling,'stead of donkeyin' around.
Then I'd be the poorest coasterman this side of Edgartown.
   
    Rosie, get my Sunday shoes....

Any fool can work an engine, takes brains to work a sail,
And I never seen no steamer make much good out of a gale.
You can go and pay your taxes on the rationed gas you get;
But at least to me, the wind is free, and they haven't run out yet.

    Rosie, get my Sunday shoes,

If I ever get back to her, you know I'll treat her just the same:
I'll jibe her when I want to boys, and I'll sail in freezing rain.
I'll park that old boat on the beach, and go dancin' in the town,
'Cause a man who's fit for hangin' prob'ly never will get drowned.

    Rosie, get my Sunday shoes....

Words and music by Larry Kaplan
© 1976, Winter Harbor Music, BMI
© 1991, Hannah Lane Music, BMI

From the song notes of "Worth All The Telling" Folk Legacy Records, Inc, Sharon, CT., CD-122 (by permission):

Mildred Tilton Huntington first told me about the life and times of her great uncle, Zebulon Northrup Tilton back in 1975, but I had known about this great fisherman and coasterman from Massachusetts a number of years before. Zeb was born in 1867 and died in 1952 at the age of eighty-five. He lived long enough to see the coasting schooner trade all but disappear. This song is about the day Zeb's daughters, Rosie and Gertie, helped him ashore, leaving his favorite vessel (he had owned a number), the Alice S. Wentworth, for the last time.

Stories? Too many to tell here. Zeb's popularity in his later years was sadly, not so much because of the trade he worked, but because of his wit and notoriety that found its way to the media. Still, I think he was a link to an appreciation of bygone days which I felt, through the song, maybe I could help preserve...not their memory but rather their importance. Besides sailing vessels STILL carry goods all over the world, just not much in the USA. Zeb called the Alice S. Wentworth "The Wentworth" never "Alice," so I have had to live with that poetic license for a long time. Rosiland and Gertrude did indeed escort Zeb arm in arm to say goodbye to the Wentworth just before he died, and after he did, the vessel changed mostly caring hands a number of times, meeting her final end dockside by Anthony's Pier Four Restaurant in Boston, during a Nor'easter. I first met E.Gale and Mildred Huntington when they invited me to the Island to hear my new song about Mil's uncle, and I promised not to play it until they made "suggestions" and said it was accurate, and that, incidentally included the words he often used (e.g. cord, no steamer, work an engine etc.) I've heard school groups in many places sing this song, there has even been a ring-tone for gosh sake. The real endorsement was Tilton family telling me, "Yes, that's exactly what Zeb was like." So it has taken on a life of its own. Read Polly Burrough's book "Zeb," (2005) available from the Bunch of Grapes. Bookstore in Martha's Vinyard to learn more, and thank you to all those who have been singing this. Larry