J C Cohen

Listen all you children to my sad refrain

About a subway conductor on a runaway train

Squeezing people into cars, he won his fame

And John Charles Cohen was the great man's name

J. C. Cohen, what a great conductor

IRT that's a subway line

And if you gotta travel uptown

He's a greater conductor than Leonard Bernstein

'Twas on a Sunday in the summer and from everywhere

People planned to take a subway to the World's Fair

A half a million people tried to push and jar

All of them determined to get in one car

But the IRT depended on their finest men

J. C. Cohen could pack a subway like a sardine can

He pushed the people up and back and 'round about

He squeezed so many in he squeezed the engineer out

J. C. Cohen, what a great conductor

How he'd moan, step to the rear

J. C. Cohen, he really had a problem

On a subway train without an engineer

J. C. tried to get into the engineer's place

But when he look inside the cab, he saw a strange man's face

A half pint drunk with a full pint bottle

He emptied out the bottle and he yelled, full throttle

They passed Columbus Circle doing 82

A couple minutes later they were under Bronx Zoo

J. C. shuddered and he said, "I guess

This used to be a local but it's now an Express"

J. C. Cohen, what a great conductor

Kept his head when everyone was tense

He said, "When we pass the city limits

Everybody pays another fifteen cents"

J. C. said, "We're heading north, my friends

But not a man alive knows where the subway ends"

The train went under Albany at 90 flat

And Governor Rockefeller hollered, "What was that?"

A lady said to J. C. Cohen with indignation

"If this is Albany then you have passed my station

So either you should take me back to fifty ninth Street

Or ask one of these gentlemen to give me his seat"

J. C. Cohen, what a great conductor

J. C. Cohen noticed something odd

When he saw lobsters on the roadbed

He said, "I got a feeling we're beneath Cape Cod"

Oh well, the train kept speeding to the north my friends

Finally came to where the tunnel ends

When they came up to the surface from the long, long hole

They were twenty seven inches from the great North Pole

J. C. hollered, "Everybody out

This is the end of the line beyond the shadow of a doubt"

They went out to get some fresh air and before they took a whiff

Cohen and all the passengers were frozen stiff

J. C. Cohen, what a great conductor

Bless his soul, he ran out of luck

J. C. Cohen, he was really frozen

And he had to be brought home in a Good Humor truck

When they told Mrs. Cohen that she'd lost her man

She said, "Must you interrupt me when I'm playing Pan?"

Then she said to her partner, Mrs. R. J. Rosen

"Cohen was a lovely husband but he's no good frozen"

Then she went to her little boy and took his hand

And she said, "I'm going to take you out to Disneyland

So Melvin, little darling, don't you weep or wail

'Cause you got another papa on the monorail"

Got another papa on the monorail