Bingo Bango Bongo.

When I was little, maybe three or five or around there, one day I went to visit my Nana at her house across the Bay from the cabin. I don't know what my dad or my Grandpa were doing, but for some reason, I ended up sitting on the front porch with Nana looking at clouds. We looked for shapes together. I don't remember any of the shapes we saw that day, but I do have a very clear of how Nana would always exclaim when she saw a new shape.

"Well Bingo, Bango, Bongo! Look! There's a puppy!" (or a squirrel or a pine tree in the wind.)

And I thought to myself -- what an interesting collection of words. I'd never heard this expression -- Bingo, Bango, Bongo -- before. But I thought it was pretty great.

I didn't think of that phrase or that day very often, but one of the times I recalled it with great clarity was many years later. I was a young teenager and I was walking in the New Road that Grandfather had cleared with his own chainsaw and brute strength. He already used walking sticks to ameliorate the occasional arthritis. And I remember him poking a tree that didn't look so steady and exclaiming (!) --

"Bingo, Bango, Bongo, it looks like that tree's going to have to be taken out."

And much later -- when I found out that Bingo Bango Bongo came from a pop song during the early part of the century -- Bingo Bango Bongo, sang the Andrews Sisters and Danny Kaye -- I don't want to leave the Congo --- I wondered if maybe my grandfather didn't actually make a subtle pop culture reference about the tree not wanting to leave the jungle...

but such allusions were not the stuff my grandfather was made of, so I doubt that that was the point.

The point for me was the fascination with such an obscure phrase that seemed so easy to use in multiple settings and had been passed down through two generations...

That's my story. And I'm sticking to it.