Type
Song
Composer
Augustus Barratt
Lyricist
Augustus Barratt
Publisher
Shapiro, Berstein & Co.
Notes
A mixture of Pharaonic and Islamic Egypt images.

"Where the flatirons blow..." seems a strange image. It may derive from the famous Flatiron Building, a triangular-shaped office building at the intersection of Braodway and 5th Avenue at 23rd St. in New York City. "Traditioinally the windiest corner of the city, it was facetiously considered a good vantage point for the glimpse of a trim ankle, in the long-skirted, prewar [WWI] era."1 The expression "twenty-three skidoo" is supposed to derive from the attempts of the police to break up groups of loiterers at that spot.

George Eastman's Kodak camera was making its impact on popular culture.

1New York City Guide (New York: Random House, 1939), pp. 204-205.
Lyrics

I wish I'd lived in the days of Pharaoh,
When the girls wore nothing much at all.
Those were the days when men were unaware
o' all the think for which we have to fall.
Now-a-days, nobody knows
which is girl, and which is clothes.
Think what a time Egyptians had,
When the wrens could neither paint nor pad.
Right out there on the burning sand,
Where the flatirons blow by the Pyramids grand,
I'd have built a special big grandstand,
When the chickens had their play-time;
With a bright search-light for the velvet night,
And a camera ready for the day-time. When my

CHORUS:
caravan was resting by the waters of the Nile;
I'd have seen those maidens dressed in bits of chiffon and a smile;
I'd have found it interesting,
To have been a crocodile,
When my caravan was resting by the waters of the Nile.

Country
Egypt