30,000 Pounds of Bananas

"30,000 Pounds of Bananas", sometimes spelled "Thirty-Thousand Pounds of Bananas", is a song by Harry Chapin from his 1974 album, Verities & Balderdash. The song became more popular in its live extended recording from Chapin's 1976 concert album, Greatest Stories Live that started the phrase "Harry, it sucks". The song is based on an actual truck accident which occurred in Scranton, Pennsylvania in 1965.[1]

Contents

Incident

On March 18, 1965, a 35-year-old truck driver named Gene Seski[2] was on his way to deliver a load of bananas to Scranton, Pennsylvania. Seski had been an employee of a man named Fred Carpentier, who operated a small truck line in Scranton, and was returning from the boat piers at Weehawken, New Jersey where he picked up his load. While the exact information is somewhat lost in time, the load was clearly destined for the "wholesale block" on the western edge of Lackawanna Avenue in Scranton, the local A&P Warehouse or to "Halem Hazzouri Bananas", the premier banana purveyor in the area at the time. Seski was driving a 1950s Brockway diesel truck tractor with a 35-foot semi-trailer while and was headed down Rt. 307 when he suddenly lost control. The "two-mile" descent extends from Lake Scranton down to the bottom of Moosic Street, where the truck eventually crashed at the SW corner of Moosic St and S. Irving Ave. For some reason, the truck cruised into Scranton at about ninety miles-per-hour sideswiping a number of cars before it crashed, killing the driver and spilling bananas everywhere when the rig came to rest. The road was then closed for cleanup as Johnson's Towing Company helped out in the recovery. Trucks over 21,000 lb (9,500 kg) are no longer allowed to travel that route.

The song

The song portrays a fictional account of the incident played to the form of a country-folk song. With each verse, the song gets faster to which Chapin explained is to "build up intensity and excitement." During the chorus, Chapin sings the verse "thirty-thousand pounds" followed by Big John Wallace singing the bass line "of bananas". During concerts, the crowd would often shout this verse.

Content

A young male truck-driver is driving "just after dark" during his "second job" to deliver a load of bananas to Scranton, which is described as a "coal-scarred city where children play without despair," the population of which consumes about 30,000 pounds of bananas daily. While approaching Scranton, he passes a sign he "should have seen" reading: "Shift to low gear / a fifty dollar fine my friend" because he is too busy thinking about seeing his girl after his trip. He begins to travel down the "two-mile drop" road to the bottom of the hill. Suddenly, the truck begins to go faster down the hill and driver tries to apply the brakes, only to discover they aren't working. He says, "Christ!" who ironically is "the only Man who could save him now" as the load of bananas push against the truck causing it to pick up speed. Cruising into Scanton at "about ninety miles-per-hour", he almost hits a passing bus. The driver then prays twice to God to make the event all a dream before he "sideswiped nineteen neat parked cars / clipped off thirteen telephone poles / hit two houses, bruised eight trees / and Blue-Crossed seven people." He is decapitated in the accident and 400 yards of the road down the hill is smeared with his load of bananas.

The song's epilogue tells the story how Chapin first heard of the event coming on Greyhound bus out of Scranton some months later. An old man sitting next to Chapin implores him to imagine "30,000 pounds of mashed bananas."

Alternate endings

In the live performance form the album Greatest Stories Live, Chapin sings two alternate endings to the song he originally had in mind, explaining to the audience that the rest of the band was less than enthusiastic about them (with his brothers Tom and Steve each offering the summary dismissal, "Harry, it sucks!"). The first alternate ending uses "Yes we have no bananas" as the punchline of the song. The second ending is described by Chapin as a "country-western" ending about "motherhood" because the song "already had a truck." It deals with a young mother crying while watching her child sleeping. The woman is presumably the truck driver's wife, and because of her sorrow over the accident, and "though she lives in Scranton, Pennsylvania / she never, ever eats bananas." During concerts, Chapin divided the audience during this ending, usually turning it into a contest between men and women with regard to singing skill. The second alternate ending has everyone sing 'of Bananas!' in harmony, swelling to a climax and cutting off.

A third alternate ending surfaced later which Chapin would often introduce with a monologue about Donnie and Marie Osmond, and the technical definition of the word 'sucks'. The third alternate ending is a parody of a Chiquita banana commercial, done in 'Jimmy Buffett style', with the participation of the whole band. The ending is cut short by Big John singing the first verse of "Taxi" in the form of an upbeat disco style which concludes with Chapin telling him "it sucks."

The Bottom Line CD features the four endings along with "Final Concert". Other recorded examples of the song with all four endings include performances at Knoxville Memorial Stadium on March 7, 1979, the Coffee Break Concert broadcast on WMMS Cleveland on December 5, 1979, and the Boston University concert on April 1, 1981.

"Harry, it sucks" became a popular catchphrase among Chapin's fans, to the point where T-shirts sporting the phrase would be offered at his concerts.

References