Hey, catcha cobia,
Hey, catcha valentine,
Hey catcha co co bia,
Eyes cold valentine bia.
I listened to that jingle for years. The damned thing became an ear worm. An ear worm can be a snatch of rhythm, a melodic phrase, a whole tune. First, they just crawl around your ear, but eventually they become permanently stamped into your memory.
Ear worms can disappear, but they often play back on a prompt. For example, the melody of “September Song” might resound when a person contemplates aging. Ear worms breed association.
I couldn’t remember where I’d first heard it, but I associated the gibberish of that jingle with baseball games on the radio. No one listened to baseball games on the radio at my house. But Del Delamater, the giant guy who ran the variety store up the street, listened to baseball games on a squwky radio on the shelf behind the cash register from April through October.
I listened to a lot of radio baseball because I would be at Del’s Variety on a near-daily basis
If my mom sent me, it was for a loaf of bread, a can of frozen orange juice, or a jar of mustard, stuff you might run out of between grocery runs to Donelan’s super market.
If I was walking the mile down the hill to my pal Roger’s house, I’d stop at Del’s for a box of Good ‘n Plenty, or Smith Bros’ black cough drops, or a Chunky.
The store was connected to the Delamater home. I knew this because I was pals with Bobby and Nancy Delamater. I thought it was pretty grand. If their mom needed anything for dinner, Bobby or Nancy could just pop out and grab the needed item off the shelf.
The store was pretty grand for Del, too. In the summer, he could sit behind the cash register, nurse a cold beer under the counter, and listen to the ball game. I guess he’d have more than one beer if the day was hot or if business was a slow.
Del kept the store dark and cool in the summertime. I liked to open the screen door to Del’s Variety and walk into the cool darkness. Every once in a while, probably after he’d nursed a few cold ones, he’d let me grab a Coca Cola out of the cooler for free. After all, I was pals with Bobby and Nancy.
So, one way or another, I’d be in that store pretty much every day, especially in summer when school was out. I heard a lot of baseball on the radio. That’s where I heard the jingle and that’s how it became an ear worm.
Hey, catcha cobia,
Hey, catcha valentine,
Hey catcha co co bia,
Eyes cold valentine bia.*
Even with all the jingle replays during the games — between innings or during pitching changes — I couldn’t figure out the words.
What was a cobia?
How do you catch a valentine?
And what did cold eyes have to do with valentines?
Valentines were supposed to be about love, not cold eyes.
Years after I’d forgotten the gibberish of that ear worm mystery jingle, I did learn the correct lyrics. And although I never spent much time with the beer, I do love Ballentine’s ale.
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- *If this jingle gibberish scans for you, drop a translation into the comments section.
Within six months of their birth, my mom enrolled my brothers, Keith and Kevin, in the Screen Extras Guild, and then, after they had some experience under their tiny belts, the Screen Actors Guild. As babies, they were sometimes hired to play one role because labor laws restricted infants from being on camera for more than just a few minutes at a time, so they’d switch them out when more screen time was needed (as in The Long Gray Line with Tyrone Power and Maureen O’Hara).
