Nuts to the flabby guys

If you attended grade school in the United States in the early to mid-1960s, the term “chicken fat” may hold a special, indelible, perhaps excruciating meaning to you.

If you didn’t or you don’t, here’s the sordid tale of one of our nation’s most shameful episodes.

The actor and singer Robert Preston had become famous in the title role of “The Music Man.” Meredith Wilson was the composer of that show. When President John F. Kennedy launched his Physical Fitness Program (a forerunner of Michele Obama’s Let’s Move! effort), Preston and Wilson were recruited to create a workout song that would motivate millions of the nation’s youth to shed pounds, tone muscles, and purify their precious bodily fluids.

It opens with a horn-heavy fanfare, quickly interrupted by Preston’s barking baritone:

Touch down! Every morning … ten times!

What follows is a long series of what used to be called calisthenics, directed by Preston in his best pseudo-military style. Today, the whole thing smacks of, at best, a Cold War-era “duck-and-cover” relic — and at worst, a kind of junior “Manchurian Candidate” indoctrination exercise.

Push up! Every morning …. ten times!

Never mind that Preston, in the eyes of most kids of that era, was a total square; our musical infatuations were, or shortly would be, focused not on River City, Iowa, but Liverpool, England — “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” not “Shipoopi”; guitars, not trombones (least of all, 76 of them).

It didn’t matter. The White House sent 200,000 copies of “Chicken Fat” on record to schools across the nation. And the mind control experiment was under way.

Sit up! Every morning … ten times!

For what was designed to tone and strengthen our little bodies ended up making a far greater impact on our developing minds. The needle that tracked the groove on that 45 rpm vinyl also etched an aural image on millions of young psyches. To this day, the opening bars of “Chicken Fat” immediately transport me back to the multi-purpose room of Owyhee Elementary School in Boise, Idaho, where I joined several dozen fourth-graders in dutifully following Preston’s repeated commands to “swing that rusty gate” and “pump, pump, pump …” For six and a half agonizing minutes.

Every morning.

Ten times!