Dick Raymond's September Poem "SKINNY AND NAVVIE AND STEAM"

                             

SKINNY AND NAVVIE AND STEAM *

A Kind of Dirge for Academics

"These are the saddest of possible words,

  Tinker to Evers to Chance …

  Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble,

  Tinker to Evers to Chance."

-- FPA, "Baseball's Sad Lexicon"

And these are the names of the Courses of Woe:

  Skinny and Navvie and Steam.

The Mids who may fail them shall certainly go,

  Skinny and Navvie and Steam.

For Physics and Chemistry comb out the duds,

You may be a jock but these courses are studs,

So drown your blue sorrows with schooners of suds,

  For Skinny and Navvie and Steam.

Plebe Math is a nightmare, likewise Analyt,

  (Sing Skinny and Navvie and Steam)

And Spherical Trig is a drain on the wit,

  (Sing Skinny and Navvie and Steam)

Electrical P-works blow fuses galore,

Mistakes with a sextant run warships ashore,

And Enthalpy Tables—woosh, need I say more?

  (Sing Skinny and Navvie and Steam)

But Mids of today are adept with computers,

  (Sink Skinny and Navvie and Steam)

They know all about greenhouse gas and polluters,

  (Not Skinny and Navvie and Steam?)

They use a sky-satellite plotting their course,

Can calculate horsepower to the last horse,

With nuclear engines providing the force—

  Aloha to Skinny and Steam!

9-1-19