Henry's Songbook

How do I know my youth is all spent
My get-up-and-go has got up and went
In spite of it all I'm able to grin
When I think of the places my get-up has been

When I was young my days were so full
Football and fun every day after school
Then I was older, the nights had no end -
Wine, women, music and friends
Now I'm old, I've had my fling
I huff and I puff, I can't do a thing
Never you laugh, I don't mind at all -
I'd rather be huffing than not puff at all

Old age is golden so I've heard it said
Sometimes I wonder as I crawl into bed
With my teeth in a cup, my hair in a drawer
I hope my glass eye doesn't roll on the floor
As sleep dims my vision I say to myself
Is there anything else I should lay on the shelf
Perhaps I should climb up and sleep there instead
For there's more of me there than there is on the bed

I wake up each morning, lift up my head
I pick up the paper, when it's all read
If we're not mentioned we know we're not dead
So we eat a good breakfast and we go back to bed

(as sung by Iain MacKintosh & Hamish Imlach)

[1964:] I came across these verses in a Wisconsin hash house, and have since learned that they're known in almost every old-age home in the country. [...] Only the last couplets of the first [see above] and second [not included] verses are mine. (Seeger, Rhymney 104)

[1993:] It was around 1961. Singing in Wisconsin with my younger brother and sister, Mike and Peggy, I found the verses [of this song] on the back of the menu of a roadside diner. I had never seen them before except for the first two lines, which I had once seen scrawled on the door of a public toilet. When I put a tune to it and added a couple of lines, I wrote to the hash house. I had stolen their menu. They told me they got the words from a newspaper column in a Milwaukee paper. I wrote to the columnist; he couldn't remember who had sent it to him. I have since found that the poem has been widely reprinted in different versions. Nobody knows for sure who originally wrote it. [...] Probably sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century. I heard from people who remembered it from before WWI. It's sometimes titled I'm Doing Quite Well For The Shape I'm In. All I contributed besides the melody were a couple of lines and the idea of repeating the first four lines as a chorus. (Seeger, Flowers 245f)