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The Citizen, 2013-09-12, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2013. PAGE 5. Let me run something by you. “Day-O. Me say day, me say day, me say day-o.” I imagine half the people reading this heard some distant bells when they read that. The other half wonders if I’ve mixed up my meds and I’m freaking out. At ease, everybody. That was just a half-remembered remnant of an old folk song that swept the English-speaking world a little over half a century ago when a young singer named Harry Belafonte sang those words into a microphone for the first time. It was a simple folk tale, the story of a night shift worker who stacks bananas. He’s been working all night. After a little partying. I work all night on a drink of rum. His work is hard. And repetitive. I stack banana till de mornin’ come. Packing bananas is not pleasant work and it’s not easy. Six foot, seven foot, eight foot bunch. And, it can be dangerous work. A beautiful bunch of ripe banana Hide the deadly black tarantula... As with most jobs, there’s a foreman, an inspector, a head honcho to be reckoned with. In this case, it’s the tallyman. In the banana business, everybody has to reckon with the tallyman. Come Mister Tallyman, tally me banana. Our man is tired. And hung over. And the sun’s coming up. Daylight come and me wan go home. It’s a simple song. A simple folk tale, really. Nobody expected much of it when, almost exactly 57 years ago, on Sept. 8, 1956, Harry Belafonte recorded that song, called variously “Day-O”, “The Banana Boat Song” or, in Jamaica, “Hill and Gully Rider”. It was just a filler song for the B side of an album called Calypso. The album had “Jamaica Farewell” and “Matilda” – and Belafonte’s people knew those songs were bound to be hits. But the Banana Boat song surprised every- one. It was a smash; a number one single. It propelled the whole album to number one on the Billboard charts where it remained for 31 weeks – which was unheard of at the time. Not only that, the album stayed on the charts for the next 99 weeks – almost two years. That was a feat that would not be repeated until Michael Jackson recorded Thriller, 40 years later. So if the song was such a mega event, how come half the people reading this column never heard of it? That’s because of another musical phenomenon that burst onto the world stage in 1956. It arrived in the form of a hillbilly truck driver from Tennessee. Belafonte’s Calypso album surfaced precisely when a revolutionary force that came to be known as Rock and Roll coalesced into an unstoppable force named Elvis. Without Elvis, no Rolling Stones, Beatles, Springsteen, Rush...all that might have been buried in a tsunami of Calypso music. But it didn’t happen. History, as history often does, did a little hop, skip and a jump and Calypso music, which looked to dominate the musical scene, became a musical footnote instead. History does that sort of thing from time to time. Ask the dinosaurs. Ask Neanderthals. Oh, right. We can’t. Arthur Black Other Views Buried by a rock and roll tsunami When an event has been a community fixture for decades, common thinking dictates that it becomes more important to the community year after year. In the grand scheme of things this is, of course, true. However, on a year-to-year basis, it’s easy to forget how much a well- established community event means to its host community. Yes, there is the history involved with events like last week’s annual reunion of the Huron Pioneer Thresher and Hobby Association or the Blyth Festival, which wrapped up its season’s productions last weekend, or the Walton TransCan, which crowned its winner late last month. But when we can count on these events to bring thousands and thousands of people to the community year after year, it’s easy to forget how lucky we are to have them. This thought ran through my head last week as I drove to work every day and saw dozens of garage sales. Local families had stored their unwanted, but still functioning items for months during the summer (traditional garage sale season) and saved them for the first weekend after Labour Day in Blyth, knowing the multiplied number of cars that would pass by their sale every day. Funny that it took me this long to notice the correlation between the reunion and garage sales, but it really drove home how deep the impact of an event like the reunion runs. There are obvious lines that can be drawn from the reunion to organizations like local churches and service groups that set up shop at the reunion. But the economic reverberation throughout the community, and surrounding communities, simply cannot be understated. Whether it’s one of the dozens of garage sales on the streets, or those three cute kids at the end of Gypsy Lane with a very professional-looking lemonade stand, there is money to be made and we shouldn’t forget how lucky we are to have that. Even at this office, it is our pleasure to compile stories for the reunion’s annual issue and guide, which of course provides a boon to our bottom line. That’s why the importance of projects like 14/19 and the Guelph to Goderich Rail Trail cannot be lost in the shuffle. Projects like these have this kind of potential and it’s all thanks to visionaries who look at communities like Blyth, Brussels and Walton and see the potential for a summer theatre, or a motocross track. Decades later we are all here reaping the benefits of their foresight. The same thing happens in a place like Goderich every year, where locals bemoan tourists that are clogging up local shops and roads, making it tougher to get around, or run errands that might take a third of the time in the winter. However, without those tourists, Goderich wouldn’t be what it is today, just like so much of what a place like Blyth has become has the Blyth Festival, and its founders and dedicated volunteers, to thank. It’s easy to forget the principles of economic spin-off, but when tourism is such a big part of what we do here in Huron County, you can’t forget and you can’t take these events for granted. So when those three little kids make some money selling lemonade, it is to the founders of the Huron Pioneer Thresher and Hobby Association that they owe a tribute. Of course, they don’t know that, but they do. And as fall fairs roll around once again, remember all that they mean to their communities, and everyone within them, as decades-long traditions are carried on. Ripple economics Shawn Loughlin Shawn’s Sense If you’re on social media at all these days, odds are you are bombarded by messages about how people deserve more than just the compensation they receive for doing their job: they also deserve your thanks and consideration. I don’t want to point any fingers, but a lot of the ones I see come from teachers. That could be because, having gone to a campus that had half its population in a concurrent education program, I have a lot of friends who are teachers. It could also be because teachers, whether justly or not, have been targeted recently for budgetary cutbacks by the provincial government. Regardless of whether it’s the former or the latter, the messages usually go something like the following: [This worker] is working while you’re watching television. [This worker] is spending his own money to enhance their workplace. [This occupation] is working while you’re not. Okay, maybe the last one is more of a paraphrasing, but you get the idea. The pieces refer to the fact that these people, be they teachers or be they members of some other maligned career field, are working while you are apparently not (since you’re on Facebook... unless you’re in journalism, marketing, or any number of fields where you might use Facebook to check information, get in touch with people for stories or advertise to people). Now, before anyone starts thinking this is an anti-teacher column, it’s not. This column is a pro-everyone column. It’s also an anti- everyone column if you happen to be the kind of person who thinks they need special treatment because of the career they chose. I know for a fact that, on occasion, I have been out goofing around with friends and they have had to go do report cards or grade papers or prepare a lesson plan. There’s no doubt in my mind teachers do have to work above and beyond the seven or so hours they are in their schools. I also know for a fact that, as part of my job, I go to council meetings, to Business Improvement Area meetings, to community group meetings and to sports events while my friends, who are, again, mostly teachers, are out goofing around. It’s a sacrifice a lot of people have to make. There are people who work 9 to 5 and never have to worry about working overtime on a regular basis. There are those of us, however, who chose careers that require us to work above and beyond what my friends in the construction plants I used to work in called “bankers’ hours”. I’m not complaining. I love being in on the ground floor of discussions and new ideas. I’m simply stating that, while some teachers are enjoying their vacations or their home time, I’m schlepping myself, a laptop and camera gear around the county and beyond to get the stories that fill the newspaper every week. I don’t expect thanks for that. I do it because it’s my job. Now, I’m a thankful guy. I thank everyone who helps me out in any way. Whether it’s doctoring up my coffee, doctoring me up or fixing my car, I always try and remember to mind my Ps and Qs because that’s just the way life is supposed to be. There are, however, positions which I feel are above this and everyone should always thank them. People like firefighters, police officers, hospital employees and others do jobs that put them on the front line and right in harm’s way 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Those folks have my undying thanks for doing their jobs. However, when someone begins to try and guilt me into thanking any career because they think they’re the only people not burning the candle at both ends on occasion, well that frustrates me. That makes me look at my own work, like, say, writing this column as well as some stories on Sunday evening because I spent a good chunk of my week taking in the sights and sounds (and getting photos and videos of) the annual reunion of the Huron Pioneer Thresher and Hobby Association and wonder why they feel they are deserving of so much more recognition than everyone else. I’m again going to point at teachers because they have the career mentioned the most in these posts. They may work above and beyond their classroom or office hours, but so do a great many other people in other careers and those people aren’t trying to garner support for themselves by pointing it out. We (and yes, I feel very comfortable using the term ‘we’ here) toil day in and day out doing our jobs, performing our career tasks, and we do so because we choose this to be our job. Don’t confuse my sentiment here. I have had some fantastic teachers and I thank them for teaching me what they did and going the extra mile, however they didn’t do it for gratitude and they never, to my knowledge, tried to make other people appreciate their work for anything other than its intrinsic value. In the end, I guess it comes down to really, truly appreciating what you do for a living and not letting anyone else devalue it. I have to believe all these people looking to have their work recognized as going above and beyond the call of duty need to take a good, hard look at their career and ask themselves if they got into it for the right reasons and if those are still the reasons they get up every morning and go to work. I, for example, got into journalism because I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to bring the news of the world back home to Seaforth, Goderich and Huron County. That’s why I got into it, but that’s not why I’m where I am now. I’m here because I love my work. I enjoy writing, I enjoy photography and I enjoy telling people’s stories. Sure, it may not be what I thought it was going to be the day I had my figurative diploma in my hand (a story for another day), but it is something I love doing and something I don’t do for any required recognition. I spend money I make on cameras and computers to take better pictures, on books to try and avoid making mistakes and on magazines to hone my craft. It’s not because I want to be thanked, it’s because I want to be the best at what I do. If you need to be thanked, or recognized for what you do, then you aren’t doing what you should be doing. It isn’t that people shouldn’t be recognized for the work they do, it’s that recognition shouldn’t be the reason they get up and go to work in the morning. Denny Scott Denny’s Den Recognition-seekers need a new job