Paw-Paws

Remember this song from your youth?

Picking up paw-paws; put 'em in a basket.
Picking up paw-paws; put 'em in a basket.
Picking up paw-paws;put 'em in a basket.
Way down yonder in the paw-paw patch.

Now, when I first heard this song back in grade school* I was under the impression that the term Paw-Paws was slang for Fathers, that the Paw-Paw Patch was code for a tavern or local watering hole and that the process of picking them up and putting them in a basket was sending someone into the swillhouse to get the assembled and besotted patriarchs home by means of some cart or other wheeled conveyance, as it was well past the time they were to be home.

Silly young me.

As it turns out, Paw-Paws are a fruit-bearing tree...not soused-outta-their-gourds-Pa Pas.

Wow.

Talk about being completely off on THIS, eh?

T


*And I won't even get why in the hell we had to learn THIS and the Goober Peas tune nor the terribly juvenille lyric changes the latter underwent under our watch.