Recently viewed an old black & white film on the Turner channel. "The Naked City" written by Mark Hellinger and starring Barry Fitzgerald as a New York City chief of homicide detectives. Each day from his open office window he watched the little girls jumping rope in the street. This street activity was always accompanied by a sing-song rhyme. With daily repetition Fitzgerald found himself finishing the rhyme. It was a nice throwaway scene. It took me back to my own childhood when the streets were our playground although the macadam surface was hot in summer. I used to sit on the curb and marvel at the "big" girls jumping rope. Their footwork was quick and agile - the boys could never do it. That's why the girls were always the better dancers. Our kids also had their homemade lyrics - one went something like this:
"My mother and your mother live across the street - fourteen nineteen Beechwood Street -
every night they have a fight - this is what they say -
Alabama - soda cracker - if your old man chews tobacco - he's a dirty BLEEP."
After which the rope turners accelerate the pace and the jumper keeps going until either she misses or jumps out. As the rhyme stuck in Fitzgerald's brain, so it did in mine for seven plus decades. I was amazed at the number of rhymes found in Google search "Jump rope rhymes" - but no one plays in the street anymore which is just as well.
tjs
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