Weird as it gets: “Toking” with Lawrence Welk

This is way out of left field, but I just had to share it. I was being tritely facetious back here, answering bud’s assertion that someone who favored legalizing marijuana would probably have trouble going far with elements of the GOP (except, of course, for the William F. Buckley Memorial Wing), by saying, “Yeah… that’d be one toke over the line…”

Hey, I told you it was trite.

But being one who can’t leave a stupid (and painfully obvious) pun alone, I went looking for a link to the song — you know, for the youngsters who wouldn’t remember the song.

And I found something freaky, which you can view above. Something that, of course, only boomers will fully grok as being as weird as it is. Here, by the way, is what Wikipedia said about it.

7 thoughts on “Weird as it gets: “Toking” with Lawrence Welk”

  1. Kathy

    Thanks. That was hilarious. I know it seems impossible now but when that song was on the radio, my friends and I were in high school and we didn’t have any clue what a toke was. How fortunate we were to grow up in a small town (which was stuck in the 1950s). We read the classics, and we could diagram sentences so complex that the diagram filled a large portion of the “blackboard.” But we didn’t know what a toke or a roach was. Can’t get much luckier than that.

    How sad that little kids today know about things we didn’t learn about until we were grown and still find disturbing (not talking about smoking pot). Even more sad that information is rapidly taking the place of knowledge and wisdom.

    But the Lawrence Welk video and info in Wiki gave me a good laugh.

  2. Kathryn Fenner (D- SC)

    but, but, but it must be okay, because it has “sweet Jesus” in it.

    Do you really think the folks at LW had a clue what a “toke” was?

  3. Brad

    I don’t know… it’s conceivably possible that, being professional musicians, at least one or two members of the orchestra MAY have been former hepcats…

  4. Doug Ross

    I must admit that when I was a kid, I thought it was “one TOE over the line”. But all we had was AM radio then so I blame static.

    Unlike Bill Clinton I neither inhaled or toked.

  5. Brad

    I think I mentioned already, but I’ll do it again… I ate and drank (but did not smoke) at The Turf, the 800-year old Oxford tavern where they say Bill “didn’t inhale.” Sort of a local legend.

  6. Kathryn Fenner (D- SC)

    I left the premises whenever I detected illegal drugs. I wanted to be a lawyer and it seemed like the thing to do.

    I’m thinking hepcats mostly did hard drugs, but maybe that’s just the famous ones–the section guys maybe had to go cheap.

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