As a result of my current obsession with the music of the Glenn Miller Orchestra, the song I’ve Got A Gal In Kalamazoo is never far from my head. And every time it reappears there I’m reminded of the first proper job I was given as a clerical officer for the Scottish Special Housing Association (SSHA) some 50 years ago (in addition to filing and tea-making, of course). At that time, the SSHA, as a major landowner in Scotland, was obliged to pay feu-duty to the hundreds of original owners of the land, ranging from individual people to large institutions like the Church of Scotland. Conversely, it also had to collect feu-duty from the many individuals and organisations to whom it had sold land. I was put in charge of issuing cheques to the former group and sending invoices and reminders to the latter, as well as banking the subsequent cheques and postal orders. Feu-duties became due on each of the Scottish Quarter Days, which I still remember as Candlemas, Whitsunday, Lammas and Martinmas.
The records for all of this were kept in two large leather-bound loose-leaf ledgers – one called Payable and the other Receivable. Each ledger was half the size of wee skinny me. Together, the two of them weighed more than me. And I had to lug them along a corridor every time a transaction needed to be recorded. Every. Single. Time. Even the apparently simple process of opening one up to insert a new page was a Herculean task, involving a large piece of wood and a hammer. Those ledgers were my nemesis. And, yes, you’ve already figured the Kalamazoo connection – the bastards were made there!
Fortunately, because feu-duties were abolished in 1974, I didn’t have to put up with the ledgers for too long. They probably still exist, lurking on a shelf in a dark, forgotten basement somewhere in Edinburgh. Menacing. Indestructible. But the song is indestructible as well – and sweeter. Just listen to that orchestra starting up and that voice announcing: ♫ A B C D E F G H – I’ve got a gal in Kalamazoo ♫
The records for all of this were kept in two large leather-bound loose-leaf ledgers – one called Payable and the other Receivable. Each ledger was half the size of wee skinny me. Together, the two of them weighed more than me. And I had to lug them along a corridor every time a transaction needed to be recorded. Every. Single. Time. Even the apparently simple process of opening one up to insert a new page was a Herculean task, involving a large piece of wood and a hammer. Those ledgers were my nemesis. And, yes, you’ve already figured the Kalamazoo connection – the bastards were made there!
Fortunately, because feu-duties were abolished in 1974, I didn’t have to put up with the ledgers for too long. They probably still exist, lurking on a shelf in a dark, forgotten basement somewhere in Edinburgh. Menacing. Indestructible. But the song is indestructible as well – and sweeter. Just listen to that orchestra starting up and that voice announcing: ♫ A B C D E F G H – I’ve got a gal in Kalamazoo ♫