Friday, August 21, 2009

School Yells


I found this in a box of stuff I got from my neighbor's auction. The Amsterdam High School mascot was apparently a Dutchman. And the colors were black and red.

If you click on the image, you can see it larger, so I'm not going to retype the entire thing, but some of my favorites are below, for various reasons.
Suzy Q and truckin' on down
Come on Amsterdam
Go to town
I always wondered about "go to town" (on the sheet, it says "got to town," but the "t" is erased. Sort of). What does "go to town" actually mean? I know it's always got some kind of either violent or sexual connotation when the old timers say it, but I always wonder where it came from. As in WHY it has that connotation. My grandfather used to say it. He would say it about people eating fast, someone getting blown up / defeated / murdered violently in a movie. I really still don't get it but I'll pretend.

Big chief, Little Chief,
Papoose Squaw
Amsterdam High School
Rah ! Rah ! Rah !
What does this have to do with Dutchmen exactly?
Signal Shift,
1-2-3-4-5
Come on you Dutchmen
Skin em' alive
Do Dutchmen skin people alive?

I'm assuming (and this is Amsterdam, so that could be my problem) that since the town is called Amsterdam, the obvious conclusion would be that the "Dutchman" as a mascot comes from having the town named after the city in the Netherlands, but as the Dutch cut diamonds and grow tulips and stuff, stereotypically anyway, which is where we get mascots, it doesn't make sense.

I googled "dutch papoose" and the only thing that came up that could possibly connect the two was a dutch tanker that was later renamed the Papoose, which had a habit of wrecking into things.

Unless it has something to do with the Dutch colonization of what's now NYC, and the American Indians that lived on Manhattan Island, and somebody back in the day morphed them.

I wouldn't put it past them.


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