by Abfou <abfou2@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
Apr 12, 2008 at 06:23 PM
"Rootie Toot Toot" goes way, way back. I'd guess its origins lie
somewhere before the First World War (my Uncle Ott used to recite it
as a relic of his turn-of-the-century boyhood).
I think it was originally a self-spoofing chant popular with Christian
Bible College youth. The male version (as I've most often heard it)
goes:
Rootie Toot Toot!
Rootie Toot Toot!
We are the boys of the Institute.
We don't smoke and we don't chew
And we don't go with girls who do!
Some folks think we don't have fun.
We don't!
The female version strikes the last two lines and adds "Our class won
a Bible!", opening the hands like a book and lifting the eyes to
heaven.
It was adopted and adapted by other groups -- "the Institute"
becoming, for example, "the Boy Scout Troop."
Finally, "Rootie Toot Toot" achieved a modest immortality in the late
50s as the fruity-voiced tag to Homer & Jethro's "Battle of
Kookamonga."
Abfou
