My mom had and incredible knowledge of obscure songs. No, I can’t say that, because I found out at one point in my life that my mom’s main inspiration was Hank Williams.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

My mom loved to sing. Not opera. Not anything up on the stage. But short little ditties or pieces of songs. And I never knew, until I was an adult, which ones were songs she made up on the spur of the minute, and which ones were ones she knew from other sources. Or, as I used to say, in my naivete, which were real and which were made up. Because, if you think about it, they were all real.

The one in middle is little
The one on the side is wide
The one in the back they say is green and black
And that’s why he wants to hide.

That one she made up. That I’m 93% sure of. And the origins were something I brought home from elementary school.
Song: Move Over
I don’t know why the two have merged in my mind, but they have. I do remember that the one in the middle came as a result of that song from school, or an album we had.

But that’s part of the problem of presenting this to you now. So many songs were spur of the moment and never heard again. One of my regrets now is that I wasn’t sitting with a tape recorder, or paper, or something, to record all of this.

You know what I did try to record? Memories of her childhood. She lived so many exotic places. But I could never get her to talk about them.

Well, that’s not quite right. There were two occasions. Once, during her brother Chuck and his wife Helen’s 50th wedding anniversary, I said that Chuck’s grand kids didn’t have to sing on camera because he and my mom had refused to speak on camera about their childhood. So they did.

No, I don’t remember what they said. But I have it on video. And I made copies for everyone who attended. And some day, I will transcribe it.

The other occasion, I asked her about living through the revolution in Columbia. What she could remember was dead bodies in the streets. And filling the bathtubs with water because the rebels were threatening to poison the water supply. And sneaking out of the country in a banana boat.

At the time, I thought those stories exciting. But now, looking back, I can understand why she didn’t want to talk about them.

But back to the music.

My sister, Barbie, and I were helping Mom as she moved from e stage where she was coherent and just taking a long afternoon nap, to where she slept more time than she was awake and we watched her speech become impaired. But throughout it all, she was still making up silly songs, and, because she couldn’t get up and dance, she’d shake her shoulders in time to the music.

I mentioned early on that I was never really sure, as a child, which songs Mom had made up and which ones were by other artists. One time, when I was watching the Muppet Show, they did Binga Banga Bonga. I called Mom up in the middle of the show! I couldn’t believe it! Mom hadn’t made it up.

My other occasion of revelation was when I joined a bluegrass band. One of then non-bluegrass artists whose songs we’d perform was Hank Williams. That’s when I realized that he had been one of my mom’s favorites.

But still. That was a small percentage of the songs Mom sang. Most of them? She made them up.