The story told in the song is that of a boy (and later a girl) who play hooky from school and spend their days fishing and dreaming by the riverbank, until their schoolteacher finds them and, to prevent the incident from happening again, "plant(s) poison oak all along the stream."
The song was also recorded by various artists such as Mel Tormé, Freddy Martin,[3] The Four King Sisters, and Spike Jones.
[4] In the film, The King's Men (who also performed on Fibber McGee and Molly) play young men living in a boarding house who are endlessly singing the song while getting dressed, eating dinner, playing cards, etc., until an exasperated fellow boarder (William Irving) finally has them removed to an insane asylum.
Virginia O'Brien sings just a few words of the song as a cigarette girl exiting a scene in the 1942 musical film Panama Hattie.
In the 1951 film Ace in the Hole the song is referred to as what soldiers on a landing craft sang together to calm their nerves during an amphibious operation in Italy.