How a 15-tonne banana tragedy spawned one of the greatest folk songs ever
When musing on the vagaries of existence, Kurt Vonnegut once wrote: “That is my principal objection to life, I think: It’s too easy, when alive, to make perfectly horrible mistakes”. Vonnegut, I’m sure we all can admit, would’ve made a perfectly brilliant folk musician. No other genre purveys potholes on memory lane quite like a dogeared acoustic being strummed to the tune of four chords and a topline of timeless prose.
One of the finest cases in point for the tragicomic link between the creaking facsimile of folk and our crooked actualised existence comes from one song depicting a peculiar historic tragedy. In 1965 on Moosic Street in Scranton, Pennsylvania, a tractor carrying 15 tons of bananas lost control while skidding downhill, ploughing through cars, telephone poles, and, somehow, houses (and, yes, that is indeed pluralised in reports from the time). Bananas were strewn all over Scranton to such an extent that authorities may have feared it would attract a wild pack of marmosets up from South America.
Ultimately, this skid sadly killed the poor driver, who was no doubt referred to as a ‘local man’ in the papers as is so often the case in deaths of misadventure. This literal banana skin of a story caught the eyes of a folk musician who knew a thing or two about tragedy himself: Harry Chapin. In his song ’30,000 Pounds of Bananas’, he regales the tale of this very singular incident. The result is both laugh out loud and a sorry depiction of the human disposition like the Coen brothers at their best.
And like a lot of great folk songs, its constitution is piecemeal. He picked up the story on a Greyhound bus, and on his live album, Greatest Stories, he even tells you where he picked up the music: “This song starts off with an absolutely brilliant Chet Atkins guitar lick that took me about 4 hours to steal.” He shapes these two elements into a human comedy that ponders how such a perfectly horrible mistake came to pass.
Like the more laughable obverse of ‘Wichita Lineman’, Chapin muses that it was workday yearnings that brought about the page nine tragedy. “He passed a sign that he should have seen,” Chapin sings regarding the driver’s daydreaming demise, “Saying, ‘shift to low gear, a fifty dollar fine my friend’, He was thinking perhaps about the warm-breathed woman, Who was waiting at the journey’s end.”
Filled with quips like “But the pedal floored easy without a sound, He said ‘Christ!’ It was funny how he had named the only man who could save him now,” the song laughs in the face of catastrophe the way that folk often has. Then it picks at the reverberations of this strange quirk of fate from the fellows laughing about it on the bus to those left weeping at home and the utterly banana-less bystanders in between.
This takes a very specific news story and makes it into something universally resonant. As the old line goes, “If it was never new, and it never gets old, then it’s a folk song.” Thankfully, within that timeless decree, there is a comforting sentiment that proves you can also laugh yourself towards a disposition where you’re gladdened life is tragic if only for the chuckles it brings. Otherwise, you’d simply cry, and in a tale as absurd as 15 tonnes of bananas blighting suburban America, that would surely miss the point of life.
You can check out the full lyrics below.
Harry Chapin – ‘30,000 Pounds of Bananas’ lyrics:
It was just after dark when the truck started down
The hill that leads into Scranton Pennsylvania.
Carrying thirty thousand pounds of bananas.
Carrying thirty thousand pounds (hit it Big John) of bananas.
He was a young driver,
Just out on his second job.
And he was carrying the next day’s pasty fruits
For everyone in that coal-scarred city
Where children play without despair
In backyard slag-piles and folks manage to eat each day
Just about thirty thousand pounds of bananas.
Yes, just about thirty thousand pounds (scream it again, John).
He passed a sign that he should have seen,
Saying “shift to low gear, a fifty dollar fine my friend.”
He was thinking perhaps about the warm-breathed woman
Who was waiting at the journey’s end.
He started down the two mile drop,
The curving road that wound from the top of the hill.
He was pushing on through the shortening miles that ran down to the depot.
Just a few more miles to go,
Then he’d go home and have her ease his long, cramped day away.
And the smell of thirty thousand pounds of bananas.
Yes the smell of thirty thousand pounds of bananas.
He was picking speed as the city spread its twinkling lights below him.
But he paid no heed as the shivering thoughts of the nights
Delights went through him.
His foot nudged the brakes to slow him down.
But the pedal floored easy without a sound.
He said “Christ!”
It was funny how he had named the only man who could save him now.
He was trapped inside a dead-end hellslide,
Riding on his fear-hunched back
Was every one of those yellow green
I’m telling you thirty thousand pounds of bananas.
Yes, there were thirty thousand pounds of bananas.
He barely made the sweeping curve that led into the steepest grade.
And he missed the thankful passing bus at ninety miles an hour.
And he said “God, make it a dream!”
As he rode his last ride down.
And he said “God, make it a dream!”
As he rode his last ride down.
And he sideswiped nineteen neat parked cars,
Clipped off thirteen telephone poles,
Hit two houses, bruised eight trees,
And Blue-Crossed seven people.
It was then he lost his head,
Not to mention an arm or two before he stopped.
And he slid for four hundred yards
Along the hill that leads into Scranton, Pennsylvania.
All those thirty thousand pounds of bananas.
You know the man who told me about it on the bus,
As it went up the hill out of Scranton, Pennsylvania,
He shrugged his shoulders, he shook his head,
And he said (and this is exactly what he said)
“Boy that sure must’ve been something.
Just imagine thirty thousand pounds of bananas.
Yes, there were thirty thousand pounds of mashed bananas.
Of bananas. Just bananas. Thirty thousand pounds.
Of Bananas. not no driver now. Just bananas!”
From Greatest Stories Live: Ending number one
Yes, we have no bananas,
We have no bananas today
(Spoken: And if that wasn’t enough)
Yes, we have no bananas,
Bananas in Scranton, PA
From Greatest Stories Live: Ending #2: A woman walks into her room where her child lies sleeping,
And when she sees his eyes are closed,
She sits there, silently weeping,
And though she lives in Scranton, Pennsylvania
She never ever eats … Bananas
Not one of thirty thousand pounds …. of bananas
