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.
Charles DegelmanWriter, editor, and educator based in Los Angeles. He's also played a lot of music. Degelman teaches writing at California State University, Los Angeles.
Degelman lives in the hills of Hollywood with his companion on the road of life, four cats, assorted dogs, and a coterie of communard brothers and sisters.
Charlie, this is so funny! Somehow I knew right away what the jingle really was, maybe because of the “Hey” at the beginning of every line. But I can imagine how confusing it must have been for you. I’m sure you know about mondegreens, the term applied to misheard lyrics.
I also love your description of Del’s variety store, and how you went there every day. Very charming snapshot of small town life.
Thanks, Suzy. I think the jingle was specially written and performed to imitate a ball-stadium vendor. The whole cadence and oddly pronounced words tell me it was a beer ad for baseball games.
Del’s in retrospect was a charming place. Many stories packed into that era.
I have never heard of mondegreens. Thanks for broadening my horizons.
This is great, Charles. At first I thought I’d missed a piece of pop advertising culture, and then the third time I read your phonetic take, it clicked! We also listened to a lot of baseball when I was about the same age as you, so that’s when I must have heard it. Does Ballentine beer still exist?
Yes, Marian, I think they still make Ballentine beer and hopefully the ale. Haven’t tasted either in quite a while.
Baseball on the radio: really a wonderful way to experience a game. I once listened to the playoffs in at a writing retreat where there was no TV. I would listen to the game and cook dinner, I think it was Boston and Chicago. So vivid!
Brilliant, Charles…love the feeling of this story, of Del in the store and your pals Bobby and Nancy. Pitch perfect.
And since you asked for the translation:
Hey, get your cold beer.
Hey, get your Ballentine
Hey, get your cold, cold beer
Ice cold Ballentine beer!
Close?
Pitch perfect, Barbara! Although I also think there was a “Get yer…” on the final line as a pickup to the downbeat. Yeah, Bobby and Nancy, plenty of stories there!
I remember sitting with Bobby and Nancy on the family sofa watching TV, probably Howdy Doody or some such classic. I doubt that our feet even touched the floor. Del came roaring in from the store. He stopped in front of us, probably swaying slightly and shouted in his unmatchable Boston accent “thirteen innin’s! They went thirteen innin’s!” Had to be a Red Sox game, of course.
Sweet story Charles!
Your memories of listening to baseball on the radio reminds me of a late Philadelphia friend who somehow grew up a Yankee fan.
As a kid, he told us, he would “turn the radio this way and that”. until he could get the New York station – probably with a lot of static, but how exciting for that Philly kid.
Thanks, Dana. Love to hear the adj ‘sweet’ connected to it! As I explained to Marian in reply to her comment, I became reacquainted with radio baseball a few years ago and loved it. So much is left to the imagination, and yet we all have such clear images of what a ball game looks like.
I love the way your childhood memory misheard the jingle, but got the rhythm correct and it became an earworm with those pleasant memories of Del’s, Bobby and Nancy and listening to the Red Sox on the radio. the whole scenario playing out. I can close my eyes and see the scene perfectly, jingle and all.
I’m glad you enjoyed the story, Betsy. It was fun to put the vivid recollections of Del’s Variety together with that ear-worm jingle confusion.
This story really took me back to the days my father listened to *every* Tigers game on his transistor radio. He even brought it to the dinner table — no talking, just baseball. I love how you misheard the jingle (thanks to Barb for the complete translation). It reminds me of when my grandkids were little and had to say the Pledge of Allegiance at preschool (Indiana is strict about that stuff). That’s how I learned our country was “invisible.”
Glad you enjoyed my ‘Radio Days’ post, Laurie. And yes, all of us have suffered through such mysteries. It’s good to know our nation is invisible, particularly in the last 40 years, so smugly delivered by our friend the Gipper. I think the pendulum is beginning to swing in the other direction. But I digress. I find it very soothing to have the murmur of baseball in the background. Radio is the perfect medium for that.
This one really resonated with me, though in a slightly different way. I always thought that the first line of the Ballentine jingle sounded like “Hey, get ya cobia,” rather than “Hey, catcha cobia.” Anyhow, one of my best friends then asked his father what “ya cobia” was and his father explained. And then my friend and I memorized the whole jingle, which I can still recite to this day. (Hint: it begins, “To be crisp, a beer must be icily light, with true lager flavor; precisely right….”)
We heard the jingle all the time in CT because, for a while, the Yankees were the only Major League team on TV and, of course, Ballentine was their main sponsor. One of my earlier Retro stories talks about the letter I got from Mel Allen, then The Voice of the Yankees. He coined the phrase for Yankee home runs as “Ballentine Blasts.” But I’m sure you knew that.
I certainly remember Mel Allen, but Ballentine Blasts is new to me! Love it! I really admire those solo commentators like Vin Sculley and Mel Allen. Fewer stats to juggle, but keeping the game alive on your own, w/o visuals was a remarkable skill.
Valentine bia also gave us “Take a ring…and then another ring and then another ring…”
I am surprised anyone survives September; it seems designed to invoke sadness and maudlin songs. “September in the Rain: comes to mind, but I always hear the Bugs Bunny version!
Thanks, Dave, for your impressions! The ‘take a ring’ won’t come back to me but Ballentine seems to have inspired several of our colleagues to recall radio baseball, one way or another.
September/October are usually good months for me, but I think September’s shadow was originally cast by the return to school. Love hearing Bugs sing. Talk about an ear worm!
Baseball on the radio, always the best. My go-to (only at night, though, being in Indiana) was Bob Prince for the Pittsburgh Pirates brought to you by Iron City Beer. The description of the Variety story was superb. I didn’t know this jingle, being from the Midwest. But I resonated to the dilemma of decoding it. My brother and I (and our father till he died) never did decode what a vendor was selling at the Detroit Tigers game we attended in the 1960s: “Topalekkum! Topalekkum!”
Iron City beer, a regional favorite, along with Rolling Rock! I could have spent more time on Del’s Variety, so many images and smells to recollect. I think we all remember indecipherable words and phrases we puzzled over. Your mystery phrase sounds slightly Yiddish, doubtful from a Detroit stadium vendor but who knows?