I'm Gretchen Rubin and this is a little happier. I sometimes get what I call my America feeling.

I get the America feeling when I vote or when I see the Statue of Liberty or when I read the

preamble to the Constitution and usually I get so worked up that I actually get tears in my eyes

or get choked up. And one time when I very strongly felt the America feeling was when my family

was in the car and we were playing the music from my daughter Eliza's phone through the car,

which is like a magical thing that I don't understand how that's possible. But anyway, we were doing

that. And so her playlist was playing and of all things she had included in her playlist. The

very funny song The Farmer and the Calman, also known as Territory Folk, from the Rogers and

Hammerstein 1943 musical Oklahoma. I'd like to say a word for the cowboy. The road he treads is

difficult and stony. He rides for days on end with just a pony for a friend. I sure am feeling sorry

for the pony. And I really very strongly get the America feeling at the end of this song,

which I will play for you. But to set the scene, if you don't remember your Oklahoma so well,

there's a big party in a town in Oklahoma and this is when Oklahoma is not yet a state of the

United States. It's a territory. And the farmers are there and the Calmen are there and these are

two different groups of people. And in the song first they're kind of joshing each other and then

they're meddling each other. And then they're shoving each other and then they're having a big fight.

And the matriarch of the town and Ella shoots a gun into the air to startle everyone so that they

stop fighting. And then she orders them to continue singing. And here's how the song continues.

Hey, nobody gonna slug out anything. This here's a party.

Sing it, Andrew. Dumpty, dum, dum, dum. Oh, the father and the comment should be friend.

Good but louder. Sing it. Sing it. Sing it. Come on now.

And likes to push a loud. The other likes to chase a cow. That's no reason why they can't play.

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