The Night B4 Christmas

[rwanttaja]

Ron, everyone who's been on the Forum for a least 2+ years can count on you to provide validation and supporting evidence for just about any aviation related topic. I sent this to a bunch of pilot friends of a certain age demo(we all proudly refer to ourselves as children of the 60's) who replied they'd never seen or heard it before and thought it was great. So I gave Crusty the credit anyways just for the revival.

Thanks for the compliment, and there's nothing wrong with attributing this to Crusty... he didn't claim to be the author, but you had no reason to think otherwise. OK on both sides. Besides, Crusty probably needs the good press. :-)

For those curious how I tracked this down, I took one unique phrase from the poem ("Not an airplane was stirring, not even a Champ") and ran it through Google. A few spot checks of the earlier poems seemed to indicate a complete match. However, some verses may have been added over the years.

Personally, I think it's older than 2002. I vaguely remember it from back in the USENET days, but Google's search engine for really, really old USENET posts applies vacuum. It may even have started as a hard-copy poem, run through many a copy machine until someone finally typed it into a computer.

There are odd clues about its heritage. "...not even a Champ" certainly implies an older generation of pilot. However, one could always change the rhyme in the previous line, but the scansion of the second line requires a single-syllable airplane name. It's hard to come up with a modern one ("Bone"? "Hawk"? "Flaming heap of fiberglass death?"), so "Champ" might have been the only real option. The later reference to a "Grumman" also might be indicative of fairly old age; Grumman American shut down in the late '70s. Sure, the planes are still around, but two-syllable aircraft names are easier to come up with.

"Ringo" as a reindeer name dates it as well. He had a short-lived solo career ("No-No Song" from the album "Goodnight Vienna") but he would have been old hat past the early 80s or so (though it might indicate an older author).

We can find better clues in other places. The reference to "Rotax Reindeer" kind of points it at the late '80s, at least. The reference to a scanner probably plops it there, as well...though scanners had been available for a while, I think we saw the big boom on them in the eighties.

My guess is the early '90s...which does put it smack in the middle of the USENET era.

Ron "Taking the fun out of everything" Wanttaja