Don't Fence Me In
by Cole Porter and Bob Fletcher
Songs category pick for the week of 6/30/08
In high school my best friends and worked as camp counselors at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in the summer. Best friends, adorable kids, arts and crafts, a beautiful zoo, occasional cotton candy and a little pocket money… it was perfect. Except for one thing.
There was an older, meaner counselor who worked there with us–who knows why she chose a job where she’d be surrounded by children, the only animals at the zoo she obviously hated. She'd use a terrifyingly shrill whistle every time the kids got too excited and, believe me, when Dana and I were leading a paper bag puppet making project, it was all too easy to get excited.
Finally, the two of us took the whistle when she wasn’t looking and buried it in the dirt. Sadly, she came to work the next day with a shiny new one. We were convinced she had a cache of thousands of them in her lonely home…
But I have some really lovely memories of our time there. One of the nicest parts of the day was when all the kids would sing along to traditional camp songs. The American classic, Don’t Fence Me In, originally recorded by Cole Porter based on a poem by Montana State Highway engineer Bob Fletcher, is heavenly when it’s sung by a bunch of hopeful little kids.
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