So I like the song “America” by Simon and Garfunkel. Earlier, I was alerted to the fact that I had been singing it wrong all of my life.
I used to sing it with this line “This all seems like a dream to me now”.
Well, suffice to say, that is not how the line really goes. : p And someone else (the one who taught me what the line above REALLY said) pointed out the connection between that line and the one that goes “It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw”.
Well…yeah, that would have been a connection made… if I had known where Saginaw was in the first place. :smack: I do now, though. :o
Do you know where Saginaw is?
Do you know where it is because you actually live in that state or have visited it before or have ties (I.E. friends or family) there?
…Or do you know where it is even without ever having been to that state and having no ties to it?
Or…maybe it’s neither, and you assume where Saginaw is only because you know how the actual line in “America” goes. : p
I know the capital of that state. I know other cities in that state. I just didn’t know Saginaw was in that state.
Yes I do. I’ve been to the state, never lived there or even close, but have never been to Saginaw before. I also like that song, and I know how that line goes.
I know what state it is in from the Bill Anderson song that was a hit for Lefty Frizzell. The only other thing I know about the place is that Allmusic in its review of the album says, “If there was ever a town that is too dull to deserve such a great song, Saginaw, Michigan would be it.”
I have a theory that when singers and songwriters get together and have a few drinks, they start bragging and boasting they can write a song about anything, and make it rhyme, too. Someone does a shot and says, “OK, Hot Shot, I was born [insert name of city here] … write that song!”
That’s the only explanation for songs like Saginaw, Michigan (which rhymes with “fisherman”), Galveston (which rhymes with “she was twenty-one” and “clean my gun”), and Streets of Bakersfield (which rhymes with “blisters on my heels”).
Do good? I? No! Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-
men in Saginaw, sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I–lo!–
rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas nine more hero-men
in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God!
Brit responding (before reading the rest of the thread): it’s in the state of Michigan – I think, in the more northerly part of that state’s Lower Peninsula, on the shore of Lake Huron.
Forestalled by 5-minute edit window: got it pretty much right. I first heard of the place via the song mentioned upthread, featuring Anderson and Frizell – felt curious, and referred to the atlas.