I can’t listen to this song without thinking about Poor Kyle and his buddies.

Here it is for your listening pleasure (or angst, depending on your musical preferences):

I’ve gone to the effort of copying and pasting the lyrics here so you can read along as you listen.  I’ve also added my own side notes in [brackets like these], because the song really makes more sense if you know a little about Southern Alberta, Canada.

Chorus:

The Chev got stuck and the Ford got stuck
But the Chev unstuck when the Dodge showed up
But the Dodge got stuck in the tractor rut,
Which eventually pulled out the Ford
(With some difficulty) [It really is like this when people get their vehicles stuck in the snow or mud…anyone who’s around comes out to help. Like a party.]

More rain than we’d seen for a thousand years [because the prairies are generally dry]
Caused financial joys and biblical fears
It caused some smiles, it caused some tears
But more to the point of our story
For the first time in the collective memory that old brown prairie
That had been so dry for so long was very muddy (boggy, sticky)

Well we’d pull one truck out get another stuck in
Motors would roar, tires would spin
We’d sink right down, down to the diff [he means a differential and it has something to do with a truck’s axle or some blathering nonsense like that]
We’d all take turns and then do it again
Till no one could move then call one more friend
Come on out here, we need ya, (bring your truck)

The Chev got stuck and the Ford got stuck
But the Chev unstuck when the Dodge showed up
But the Dodge got stuck in the tractor rut,
Which eventually pulled out the Ford (and the Dodge; equal opportunity)

Got me stuck in the mud so’s i couldn’t rehearse [missed band practise]
And Chavez too has missed his work
Richie, he now fears the worst
Stood up his ex-wife, she called him a jerk
Of course, Holtman didn’t have nothin better to do, (except ranch) [Yee-haw.  Southern Albertans mostly ranch, farm, or drive truck to earn their livelihoods.]

It was truck after truck, we all got stuck,
Except the big old four-by-four Hutterite truck [Hutterites are like modernised Amish people.  They’re big into farming and live in colonies and their first language is German and once a Hutterite taught me how to say *a-hole* in his native tongue.  He volunteered the information.  I didn’t ask.]
We all thought ‘lord are we in luck!’
But he wouldn’t come anywhere near us, mighty neighborly…(mighty neighborly)

Well we used a lot of our backs and a little of our brains
We jacked up the jacks and snugged up the chains
And we all did our very best to refrain (from shovellin)
We put what timber we had underneath the wheels
And we was all out of sand but managed to steal
Two sacks of the best modern canola seed you ever did see [One thing that Albertan farmers are famous for harvesting is canola seed, used to make canola oil.  It’s bright yellow in the summer time, and from an airplane, the fields are a breathtaking sight of green-and yellow checkerboards.]
(That oughta give us some traction)

(Epilogue…)

We spilled genetically modified canola seed
That was genetically modified for control of the weeds
And for big old yields of margarine oil
We raised hell all over that virgin prairie soil
Agriculture Canada is definitely gonna be lookin for us [In Canada, the different departments are called *blank* Canada.  For example, the Canadian version of the United Stated Department of Immigration is called “Immigration Canada.”  And the Canadian version of the U.S. Department of Agriculture is called “Agriculture Canada.”  My best guess as to the reasoning behind this is because it’s easier to translate into French.  I don’t know, though.]

Poor Kyle and his cronies get together when they’re riding quads, and sometimes it can take hours to get guys unstuck from mud holes and whatever other nonsense they go blazing into.

Anyway, there’s no real point to this post except to give you all a little insight into my daily life up here in the Canadian Nether Region.  I heard the song on the radio, and it took me back to the days when I was dating Poor Kyle and liked him so much I pretended to totally dig his country music style.  Now that we’re married and the honeymoon is over, I don’t fake it anymore.  But I do like this song, because it’s so…Canada.  And so very Poor Kyle.

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