If I had a . . .

nickel for every time I've heard this song, I'd have a lot of nickels.

"If I Had a Hammer"

As Ellen Degeneres said . . . that song must have been written for people without hammers.

Written by folk songwriters Pete Seeger and Lee Hays this song was in support of the American civil rights movement and first performed in 1949. It wasn't so well received then (imagine that), but shot up the charts to the Top 10 when Peter, Paul and Mary performed it in 1962.

We took our hammer to Paris a few weeks ago and left it. Since then it seems every time we turn around we need a hammer.

Naturally, this Top 10 hit came to mind. We've been using lines from the lyrics to describe all the things we could do and all the times we could do it, if only we hadn't left our hammer in Paris.

Like, we could hammer in the morning.

We could hammer in the evening.

We could hammer all OVER this land.

I googled dumbest song lyrics and frighteningly, this one did not make the list which tells me one thing . . . there are a lot of dumb and probably wealthy songwriters out there.

Muskrat Love did make the list. What a classic. Written by Willis Alan Ramsey (whoever that is) and performed in 1976 by the Captain and Tennille , it also made the Top 10.

It's hard to believe, but I think this song is, in fact, dumber than If I Had a Hammer.

"Nibblin' on bacon, chewin' on cheese

. . . and they shimmy, Sam is so skinny . . .

And they whirled and they twirled and they tango . . . "

Regrettably, this is all from memory.

I think Jim plans to go by the hardware store this evening and we will again be hammer-owners.

There will be so many things we can do now. And Lord KNOWS what we could do if we had a bell.