Eddie Arnold Dies

Two days after I posted Eddie Arnold singing Cattle Call — mainly because it was my father’s favorite song and brought back childhood memories — comes the news that Mr. Arnold has died, a few days short of his 90th birthday and a few days after what would have been my father’s 90th. My father would have first heard Cattle Call, recorded in late 1944, a few months after returning from his European tour of duty as a B-24 pilot. I imagine Arnold’s smooth voice — he was known as the Bing Crosby of country music — fell like rain on my Dad’s troubled, drought-ridden soul. As I’ve written before, it was no easy thing to be young and alive in 1944.

Long-time readers of this blog know that I abhor narcissistic blogging, but hearing Cattle Call again has made me nostalgic. Don’t worry, I’ll get over it. In the meantime, here is the URL for Eddie Arnold singing Tennessee Stud and Cattle Call.

Bovine Consciousness

In his On Language column in the Sunday New York Times Magazine this week, William Safire notes that the 12-volume Century Dictionary is now available online and for free. Now, I admit that I had never heard of such a dictionary and I was feeling badly about that until I realized that it was published in 1890. It’s more than a century old! No wonder its free.

But I had a look at it nonetheless. It is not the OED, but it is not too shabby. For instance, even though I attended a law school out West where stealing cattle was a hanging offense, I had never heard of “Abaction.” That is the act of stealing more than one cow at a time. Which gives me an excuse to post this YouTube of Eddie Arnold singing Cattle Call, my father’s favorite song.

You may not have known that you can steal cattle by yodeling to them. Works every time. By the way, a yodeler who steals more than one cow at a time is an “abactor.”

And now, you know.

But, if you want to know still more about cows, try this cartoon from the New Yorker.