Or, If I choose to, I can flip a switch and I don’t hear anything at all. If I choose to, I hear his gleeful melody twelve times a day. Turns out our cuckoo clock has two songs. The “sound of music” every hour on the hour! Er, every other hour on the hour. Imagine my delight when I wound the clock and the cuckoo bird busted through his little door, the dancers twirled, and the tiny music box played “Edelweiss”. The clock was shipped and arrived in the States two weeks ago. On the same Rhine River cruise, in Bavaria, my wife and I bought a handmade cuckoo clock. Hap’s other revelation may be a little more prolonged. To add shame to the silliness, we marched between the tables as we played.
![happy wanderer vine happy wanderer vine](https://www.thetutuguru.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Dsc00033.jpg)
And our one and only performance – naturally – was “The Happy Wanderer”. I manned a big oom-pah-pah drum while another poor soul clanged the cymbals. I was volunteered by my fellow travelers to play with the band. First, on a cruise down Germany’s Rhine River, at an outdoor dinner in the little town of Rüdesheim. I thought I was done with Hap years ago (it took me decades to forget his slaphappy song), but recently he resurfaced. Hap’s tune even made the official list of “Scout songs” (see here.) I recall a lot of singing on weekend hikes (not sure why – who’d be happy backpacking forty pounds towards some distant campsite?) Besides “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt” and “The Ants Go Marching…”, we Scouts unabashedly sang “The Happy Wanderer” through mountains and alongside streams. Hap wandered into my life again in the Boy Scouts. “Chopsticks”, “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”, and “The Happy Wanderer” were almost assuredly the first three pieces I ever memorized. Eight years after I was born, I henpecked Hap’s tune as I learned to play the piano. He entered the “UK Singles Chart” on January 22, 1954, eight-years-to-the-day before I was born. Speaking of childhood, Hap and I first met way back then. That’s a little extreme for a children’s song, don’t you think? In his final verse, Hap wants to wander (and sing) until the day he dies. Our boy smiles the entire time and boldly invites YOU to join in the singing. Hap points out blackbirds and skylarks along the way, and his journey brings him unbridled giddy happiness and laughter (as in, “Val-deri, Val-der-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha…”). Oberkirchen coat of armsĪccording to his lyrics, The Happy Wanderer (we’ll just call him “Hap”) takes hikes into the mountains and alongside streams, his hat on his head his knapsack on his back. Wanderer went worldwide-viral and there was no turning back ever. “The Happy Wanderer” could’ve been quarantined within Germany were it not for its award-winning performance by the Oberkirchen Children’s Choir (and subsequent radio broadcast by the BBC), in 1953.
![happy wanderer vine happy wanderer vine](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/4d/65/3b/4d653bf2a9dacd121b8409d394d33c43.jpg)
Those words alone should revive the sing-song tune fried into most brains since childhood. If you’ve encountered The Happy Wanderer at some time in your life, you know exactly who I’m talking about.