I miss Joe, the yard man who came once a week to do our lawn work when I was growing up. He was not all that reliable, nor did he much like interacting with our famiy, so it was not a smiling face that I missed. It was his whistling.
I had been enamored by whistling ever since my ninth birthday party, when we all went to see the Walt Disney cartoon classic Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs. Yes, I loved the dwarfs singing “Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work we go!” as they marched to their jobs at their diamond mines. But I was utterly enchanted by beautiful Snow White, enticing her forest critters to help clean her cottage by urging them to “whistle while you work.” The trilling melody of all those adorable birdies flying merrily around her head made it imperative that I, too, learn this skill immediately.
The next week, I heard Joe trimming our grass before a storm while he was whistling up a storm. A new movie had come out — The Bridge Over The River Kwai — and its marching theme still remains the best whistling tune ever. Not normally a friendly chap, Joe took pity on me as I followed him around the yard, futilely blowing air out of my mouth but with no tune emerging. I sounded like a broken tea kettle. How he did it I shall never know, but by pressing his thumb and index finger firmly at each edge of my lips, Joe finally taught me how to explode into tune. (Actually, with my wobbly new whistling skills, what I exploded into was an off-tune. I had no musical ability as a kid. The only musical instrument I could play was my transistor radio.)
With great pride on the following Monday at school, I demonstrated my newly acquired skill. I was not at all happy when the class clown, Andrew, drew all the attention away from my astounding performance by loudly posing his dumb old riddle “Why did the moron put an onion under a bridge?” (He wanted to see the bridge over the River Kwai). There’s a wise-cracker in every elementary class.
Well, if you must know, counting me, there were two wise guys in my class. I soon read my classmates’ vibes and realized that a nine-year-old boy should not appear goo-goo eyed over a Disney cartoon heroine with her chorus of too-cutesy forest friends.
So I am ashamed to confess that I was quick to betray Snow White when some older boys taught me the cool new lyrics that were circulating on the playground. Soon I was joining in the chorus of: “Whistle while you work, Hitler was a jerk, Mussolini was a weenie, whistle while you work.” Now I was whistling (actually singing) a different tune.
Six decades later, I sadly realize that nobody whistles in public anymore — not at work, nor when they stroll down the street. Thanks to Spotify and other music apps, we have millions of tunes at our disposal, at the mere tap of a button. But it’s just not the same proactive music-making as whistling, is it? We no longer place our lips in that delightful position that—probably not coincidentally — imitates a kiss. In the words of the once famous ditty that the governess Anna sings in The King and I, we seem to have lost the ability to “Whistle A Happy Tune.”
Oh, where art thou, Sheriff Andy Taylor? How I miss that opening scene of you and Opie walking down to the fishin’ hole and whistling your show’s brilliant theme song, which is second only to the River Kwai movie in its wondrous “whistle-ability”!
Perhaps today we’ve lost the slower pace of living that made it both possible and soothing to whistle away the quiet hours. And has there ever been a genre of music since the 1950’s less congenial to putting our lips together and cheerfully blowing? Songs like Donna Summer’s “MacArthur Park” and Bruno Mars’ “Uptown Funk” may have many virtues, but whistling them merrily sure isn’t one of them.
And so I hope you will allow me to close our time together by offering you Snow White’s enchanting little song. May it transport you back to an era when political gristle and nuclear missile, though a reality even then, could be blown away from the dark corners of our minds by a jolly bright whistle.
Whistle While You Work - Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Email Elliot at huffam@me.com or click here