Love is in the air. And as thoughts turn to Valentine’s Day, we look at a great album of snapshots of people getting naked, getting cosy and having barrels of fun – in wooden barrels, once used for booze, grain and oil ever since Pennsylvania oilmen collected the substance in whiskey barrels after striking their first gushers.
Photograph collector Robert E. Jackson sees love in these terrific snapshots. And we agree. So let’s hitch up our skirts and sing along to the Škoda lásky, also known as The Barrel Polka, Rosamunde and Roll Out the Barrel, the 1927 polka that became a wartime drinking song of good cheer, foxhole camaraderie and hope:
Roll out the barrel, we’ll have a barrel of fun
Roll out the barrel, we’ve got the blues on the run
Zing boom tararrel, ring out a song of good cheer
Now’s the time to roll the barrel, for the gang’s all here
“T is sweet to win, no matter how, one’s laurels,
By blood or ink; ‘t is sweet to put an end
To strife; ‘t is sometimes sweet to have our quarrels,
Particularly with a tiresome friend:
Sweet is old wine in bottles, ale in barrels;
Dear is the helpless creature we defend
Against the world; and dear the schoolboy spot
We ne’er forget, though there we are forgot.But sweeter still than this, than these, than all,
Is first and passionate Love—it stands alone…— Lord Byron, Don Juan
“Then, all to once, it gave a jump and it seemed to me it went like a streak of lightning. It must have shot 15-20 feet out and I went into an eddy or a pool where I went round, just like that. The barrel nearly stood up, and that is the place where things go down and disappear forever”
– Annie Edson Taylor recalls becoming the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel in 1901
In Trinidad, one dollar buy
Papaya juice, banana pie,
Six coconut, one female goat,
An’ plenty fish to fill de boat.
One bushel bread, one barrel wine,
An’ all de town, she come to dine.
But here is bad, one dollar buy
Cup of coffee, ham on rye.Me throat she sick from necktie,
Me feet hurt from shoes.
Me pocket full of empty,
I got Calypso blues.– Calypso Blues
Mother phoned up last night, she was going spare
She was in a temper, pulling out her hair
Your sister’s courtin’ a scruffy looking Ted
Father don’t give a monkey’s and this is what he saidI don’t care, I don’t care
I don’t care if he comes ’round here
I got my beer in the sideboard here
Let mother sort it out if he comes ’round here– Chas ‘n’ Dave, The Sideboard Song
Spurred by demand for lamp fuel as whale blubber grew scarce, derricks popped up all over Pennsylvania’s oil region in the 1860s–although subsequent overproduction drove prices so far down that at one point, a wooden barrel was worth twice as much as the oil it contained…
– Kate Pickert, Time
Funny glasses with a little piece of ice
Anything that comes with lemon and a slice
Fancy cocktails that are shaken and not stirred
Drinks with cherries in that make you absurd
With you finger cocked to leave your friends impressed
Anything that ain’t a pint of Courage Best
Mine’s pint of best…– Chas ‘n’ Dave, Getcha! for Courage Best Bitter
“It became a game that I took to with immense gusto: to see how much I could remember about dandelions themselves, or picking wild grapes with my father and brother, rediscovering the mosquito-breeding ground rain barrel by the side bay window, or searching out the smell of the gold-fuzzed bees that hung around our back porch grape arbor. Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don’t they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers.”
— Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
We’ve lots more from Robert E. Jackson on the site. And you can follow him here for more great stuff.
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