Dunderbeck Poem by Darwin Henry Beuning

This is a German tune
My mother sang to us children
On our Minnesota dairy farm
During the 50's and 60's.

Dunderbeck

There was a little German boy
His name was Dunderbeck
He lived on sausage meat,
sauerkraut and speck.

He had a little butcher shop
The finest ever seen,
He was the man who invented
Sausage meat by steam.

Oh, mister Dunderbeck
How could you be so mean
I knew that you'd be sorry
For inventing that machine
For all the rats and tom-tailed cats
No longer can be seen,
They're all grounded up in sausage meat
In Dunderbeck's machine.

Something was the matter
The machine it would not go,
Old Dunderbeck crawled inside
To see what he could know.

Then old lady Dunderbeck
Came walking in her sleep,
She gave that crank such a terrible yank,
That Dunderbeck was meat.

Oh, mister Dunderbeck
How could you be so mean
I knew that you'd be sorry
For inventing that machine
For all the rats and tom-tailed cats
No longer can be seen.
They're all grounded up in sausage meat
In Dunderbeck's machine.

The next day at the funeral
It seemed so very queer,
When in the coffin there
No Dunderbeck appeared
But, what seemed more surprising
Would surely make you swear,
200 pounds of baloney
Lay in the coffin there.