Old McDonald’s Farm

It snows on my first day at the Brimpaen State School. A tiny snowman with twig hair and pebble-stone eyes is sitting on the veranda watching me walk into my classroom with Mum and Dad. The school teacher, Mr McLennan, greets us warmly. He had asked Mum if I could start school in July, instead of February, because the pupil numbers were low and there was a chance the school might be forced to close. I was excited to be starting school, and I like to think I did my bit to keep Brimpaen State School open!

A few months later, Mr McLennan is helping us prepare for our Christmas school concert to be held in the Brimpaen Hall. We draw pictures of animals and rehearse singing the national anthem and Silent Night. Mum says that Dad is helping the other parents build sets for the concert.

At the start of the concert, everyone stands and we sing the

Australian national anthem - God Save the Queen. The Master of Ceremonies announces that the next item will be a rendition of the family favourite, Old McDonald Had a Farm, to be presented by the students’ parents. I had heard Dad talking to Mum about that song, so I guess he must have made the sets for the farm.

The curtain rises to reveal a man dressed in a torn pair of blue overalls holding a shovel and wearing an old straw hat; he must be Old McDonald. The music starts, and a few moments later, a pretty lady wearing a red spotted dress with a floor mop on her head dances onto the stage. She looks like one of the mothers from our school. The crowd start whistling and clapping.

Everyone is singing Old McDonald Had a Farm, but strangely, the words for the second verse don’t match the song we learnt at school.

The parents sing, ‘And on that farm, he had a baby…eee iii eee iii ohhh...’

That instant, a man appears, pushing a wheelbarrow onto the stage. In the wheelbarrow, there’s an enormous baby with huge black eyes, a pink head with no hair and a white nappy around his tummy. The crowd are laughing and cheering.

As we sing, the enormous baby starts wailing, throwing his arms in the air and kicking his legs out. Mrs McDonald looks sad when she sees her baby upset, so she runs over to a table, grabs a beer

bottle with a rubber teat and thrusts it into the baby’s mouth. The baby immediately stops crying and starts sucking loudly on the beer

bottle. Mrs McDonald pats him on the head, then smiles and bows to the audience.

The crowd claps and cheers, and then someone yells out a familiar name. Only then does the awful truth dawn on Mum and me; the enormous beer-drinking baby is her husband and our dad!

Joe, second left in centre row. Gerard, centre row on right.

A story from Wayback by Gerard Dean

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