The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #21536   Message #4174270
Posted By: Jack Horntip
10-Jun-23 - 09:53 AM
Thread Name: Lyr ADD: Sunday School
Subject: RE: Lyr Req/Add: Sunday School
ALIMONY
(Learned from Lester Bush in 1927 at University of Idaho,S.B., Pocatello)

Oh, Adam was the first guy that was invented;
He Wander all around and he never contented;
They made him out of clay in the days gone by,
And the yhung hi out in the sun to dry!
Oh alimony, I wanta live, anyway, till I die!

And then came Eve, and tehy had an awful battle;
She chased Adam up a tree to get an apple!
Adam ate two, and he gave Eve one--
And that is how all the trouble begun!
Oh alimony, I wanta live anyway, till I die!

And then came Cain, and Eve was his mother;
He stumbled all around till he found himself a bother.
The Good Book says that Cain killed Abel--
He hit him in the head with a leg of table!
Oh alimony, I wanta live, anyway, till I die!

And then came Noah a-stumbling in the dark;
He found a saw and a hatchet, and he built himself an ark.
Then came the animals, two by two,
The hippo-hippopotamus and kangaroo!
Oh alimony, I wanta live, anyway, till I die!

Then it rained for forty days and forty nights without a-stopping;
The damned old boat began a-leaking and a-rocking;
The ocean got rude and the waves got rank,
And the whale threw Jonah on the Sandy bank!
Oh alimony, I wanta live, anyway, till I die!

And then came Roosevelt a-looking for a bear;
He searched the Mississippi, and he couldn't find him there.
He went to South Africa, so I've heard,
And killed them with a fountain pen at forty cents a word!
Oh alimony, I wanta live, anyway, till I die!
I once new a doctor by the name of Peck.
He fell into a well, and he broke his damned neck!
It served him right--he should have stayed at home,
Tended to the sick and left the well alone!
Oh alimony, I wanta live, anyway, till I die!

I bought myself a pair of combination underwear
Just to keep out the cold, and the damp, and the chilly air;
I wore them six months without exaggeration---
And when I went to take the off I found I'd lost the combination!
Oh alimony, I wanta live, anyway, till I die!



Pg 33, Songs and Ballads: Folk Material and Old Favorites, collected by James Kenneth Larson. undated typscript [c1933].

https://archive.org/details/1933-1972jameskennethlarson/page/n32/mode/1up

This is a variant of Sunday School stories. The first line "Adam was the first guy that ever was invented" led me to this thread.

The last verse involving the "combination underwear" is floating verse found in the following songs:

The Dummy Line.   See here: https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=14779

and in

Ain't It Great to Be Crazy. See here: https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=135448

I can't find any info on the "Alimony" chorus.