Adele Ferguson - July 21, 2011

A state song nominee with the word “Palouse”

TOO BAD. The guy who filed an initiative to change the state’s official song from “Washington my Home” to the former Seattle NBA franchise’s fight song, didn’t show up with the 240,000 signatures needed to get it on the November ballot.

In fact, he didn’t show up with any by the deadline. Kris Brandon said on filing last March that he wanted to raise awareness about the Super Sonics departure. The team left Seattle in 2008 for Oklahoma City. The initiative said that, if passed, once a professional basketball franchise returned to Seattle, the song would revert back to “Washington my Home.”

Actually, I don’t even know what the fight song sounds like, let alone the state song.

I bet you don’t know what the state song sounds like either.

Do you ever hear it sung any place? At public events? Ball games? Service club meetings the way the Rotarians sing our national anthem and “Oh, Canada?” School assemblies? The Superintendent of Public Instruction told me it used to be taught in the schools but I haven’t heard of any lately.

I think it’s time we gave this turkey a decent burial and got us a new one.

It’s not as if “Washington my Home” came with the territory.

Our first state song, “Washington Beloved,” was adopted in 1909 and discarded in 1959 when a handful of senators who were friends of composer Helen Davis of South Bend decided to honor her by making “Washington my Home” the new state song.

IT TURNED OUT to be as blah as the old one but everybody said what a lovely woman Helen Davis was so let’s not hurt her feelings by knocking her song.

In 1985, an effort was made by a bunch described as fruity wine drinkers to replace the song with “Louie, Louie.” Everybody got the fever. Some wanted “Roll on, Columbia,” penned by folk singer Woody Gurthrie, whose son, Arlo, was persuaded to come to Olympia to promote it.

Also popular at the time was Perry Como’s rendition of the theme for the TV show “Here come the brides” that went “The bluest skies you’ve ever seen are in Seattle.”

That got nowhere because nobody believed there were ever any blue skies in Seattle. There was a push for “There’s a long long trail a-windin’” because it was composed in Spokane to words by Washingtonians Jimi Hendrix and Quincy Jones. Folks wrote their own and sent them to me and I ran them in my column.

“Louie, Louie” got the most votes in an informal poll but nothing came of it because everybody said Helen Davis was such a lovely woman they didn’t want to insult her.

THE FIRST stanza of “Washington my Home” goes “This is my country. God gave it to rue. I will protect it, ever keep it free. Small towns and cities, rest here in the sun, filled with our laughter, thy will be done.” The refrain is “Washington my home. Wherever I may roam. this is my land, my native land, Washington my home.”

Now you want a song with a little pizzazz? Here’s my offering; sung to the tune of the theme from television’s “Maverick.’

“Who is the tall blond stranger there? Washington is his home.

Can’t find a one whose head ain’t square. They all come from Norway, Sweden and Finland. Herring boat, ring your bell! Faretheewell, Lars and Nels. Lutefisk is the thing they hold so dear. Nooksack to old Palouse, living on clams and snoose, Washington is the very last frontier.”

Catchy, huh?

(Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, Wa., 98340.)