By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
The snowy frozen January and February weather each year brings me fond memories of…Chicken Fat.
When the cold winter conditions limited our access to the outdoor playgrounds and playing fields of Utah’s South Clearfield elementary in the early 1970s, we attended our recesses and physical education classes in a large multipurpose room. It also served as the lunch cafeteria. Our teachers had many clever ways to keep us busy there.
The room had various circuit training stations built in, including a peg board, jumping ropes, and a climbing cable hooked to the top of a very tall ceiling. It took me all year to conquer that climb. For months I also misunderstood exactly what we were doing. I thought it was “circus training.”
When the mood struck, the school’s staff also taught us various folk dances. One involved hop-scotching through a gauntlet of long bamboo poles which two holders, to the rhythm of a tropical tune, tapped twice on the floor before clapping them together once. We even competed in unique games like crab soccer, a futbol-like contest played crawling, belly up, on all fours (like crabs, get it?) using a huge but lightweight canvas ball.
And, every once in a while, we did “Chicken Fat,” which is a catchy calisthenics song. Composer Meredith Willson (best known for The Music Man) wrote it in 1962 for President John F. Kennedy’s Council on Physical Fitness programs. Actor/singer Robert Preston (Professor Harold Hill from The Music Man) performed it, and in my humble opinion, performed it quite well.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, elementary and junior high gymnasiums across the United States, including our school, played the song on millions of little record discs donated to them.
The lyrics are pretty simple. Here are the first two verses:
Touch down
Every morning
Ten times!
Not just
Now and then.
Give that chicken fat
Back to the chicken,
And don’t be chicken again.
No, don’t be chicken again.
Push up
Every morning
Ten times!
Push up
Starting low.
Once more on the rise.
Nuts to the flabby guys!
Go, you chicken fat, go away!
Go, you chicken fat, go!
I think we young folk may have derived some serious aerobic benefit from the song, but it was also lots of fun. Even the name “Chicken Fat” is pretty darn amusing. No wonder it is one of my most vivid memories from South Clearfield elementary.
Thus, I was quite perplexed recently when I did my best Robert Preston imitation and sang parts of the song for my family, all of whom take exercise much more seriously than do I. Silly me…I thought they too might benefit from “Chicken Fat.” The reaction looks I got ranged from mild and polite confusion to “wow-I-guess-Dad-did-not-take-his-medicine-today.”
I immediately sent everyone a text with a link to the full song, thinking Robert Preston would win them over (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Iz7W2m6e78). Certainly, my daughter the professional dancer, my daughter and son-in-law the elementary teachers, my wife the preschool educator, my son the athletic trainer (and his girlfriend the teacher and cheer coach) could use this little treasure from the JFK era in their professional endeavors. Their response? Crickets.
I guess you just had to be there.
