Category: memory lane

Flashback: Mondale on Taxes

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Image result for images of silly walter mondale

Some things never change! Democrats and their mania for raising taxes, just to name one.

Return with me to good old 1984. Walter Mondale, Jimmy Carter’s vice president, has just received the Democrat presidential nomination, and the crowd on the floor is gleefully celebrating.

First he said, “Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won’t tell you. I just did.”

The crowd continued to whoop it up. And in an aside that was later to become, er, famous, Mondale remarked, “Look at ’em. We’re going to tax their ass off.” ( http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/781144/posts ).

That’s what never changes.

That’s why our national debt exceeds $18 trillion.

Will we ever, ever, ever learn?

A Bit of My Childhood Restored

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Image result for images of swan lake painting by muller kurzwelly

Many months ago I posted a little essay about this picture–Swan Lake, by Muller-Kurzwelly–that used to hang in our living room when I was a boy, and how I loved to look at it and imagine myself going to that place.

A very nice reader and her mother stumbled over my blog piece and realized they had that very picture in storage, and decided they wished me to have it.

The picture arrived this morning and now hangs on our living room wall.

Thank you, Chrissy, thank you, Dot, for giving me something that I never thought I’d see again.

Sanity Break: Cats Stalking

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

If you can watch this video without getting seasick, then you are not my wife. You’ll also enjoy it.

Here are people with hand-held, seasickness-inducing cameras playing peek-a-boo with cats to get them to stalk them. Which they do: they can’t resist it.

Remember the game of “statues”? Cats would be good at it.

Uh, what’s “statues”? It’s a game my mother and my aunts played when they were kids. If you’re It, you turn your back while the other players try to sneak up on you. At any time you can suddenly turn around and face them, and anyone you catch moving is out of the game. It’s called statues because you have to instantly become as still as a statue if you want to keep playing.

Remember Bazooka Joe?

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Image result for images of bazooka joe comics

Remember these? Bazooka Joe comics, which used to come with every piece of Bazooka Bubblegum.

I hadn’t seen one in a long time, and now I know why. The comics, after some half-hearted attempts at updating them, were discontinued in 2012. R.I.P., Bazooka Joe.

These, in their artless awfulness, were truly innocent. But there’s not much room left for innocence in our popular culture. Not much room at all.

The Worst Poet Ever?

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Image result for images of william topaz mcgonagall

I learned of something new today: William Topaz McGonagall (1825-1902), widely acclaimed as the worst poet, ever, in the English language, and perhaps the worst poet in any language ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_McGonagall ).

Sample these few closing lines from his immortal poem about the Tay Bridge Disaster of 1879, about a railroad bridge that collapsed while a train was crossing it:

Had they [sections of the bridge] been supported on each side with buttresses,/ At least many sensible men confesses,/ For the stronger we our homes do build,/ The less chance we have of being killed.

McGonagall’s life would be a sad story, except he himself never took any notice at all of the universal condemnation of his verses; and although he died in poverty, he never seems to have lost his sense of self-importance or his vision of himself as one of Scotland’s all-time greatest poets.

His works remain in print today: there’s a kind of morbid fascination in reading them, and trying in vain to find a consistent meter, or a line that scans. Greater poets by far than McGonagall have been utterly forgotten; but his incredible works are still with us.

Just search his name on your computer, and you’ll find a number of nice websites devoted solely to the worst poet ever to butcher a line.

Special Treat: A Slightly Weird Commercial

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For those of you who missed out on 1950s TV because you weren’t born yet, Wagon Train was one of the hit series of the era. And here are the three stars of the show, still in character, doing a car commercial (Ward Bond, Frank McGrath, Terry Wilson).

I find something pleasantly weird about this commercial, although I’ll be dashed if I can tell you what it is.

Once Upon a Sunday

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Image result for images of old-fashioned tripod barbecue grill

Sunday afternoon, in the summer: come on back with me for a visit to my family. A visit to old times.

It’s noisy now on Sundays, but it wasn’t then. Sunday school is on vacation. My father sends me to the playground–it’s right next door–to get sand for his grill. No gas: it’s one of those black things on three legs that uses charcoal briquets.

Everybody comes for the cookout in the afternoon. My father’s kid brother, Uncle Ferdie, will play horseshoes with us. Uncle Ferdie is an inventor, with all sorts of patents to his name. Once for Christmas we got a battery-powered tape recorder; but it was mercury batteries that had a tendency to leak. My father didn’t think it was safe, so he turned it over to Uncle Ferdie. He built a little power pack and converted it into a plug-in tape recorder, and it worked better than ever.

Along come the hamburgers, the hot dogs, the lemonade. Beer for the gents. Our step-grandfather, John, an old sailor from Holland, plays his harmonica. My aunts are all there, telling stories of their most recent bit of globe-trotting. At a leisurely pace seldom seen anymore, the day drifts into evening.

Or we might go to Grandpa’s house, just a few blocks away. He doesn’t have a grill, but he has patches of both black and red raspberries, he grows both white and Concord grapes, and he has really comfortable lawn chairs left over from the store he used to have in the 1930s. And a nice big front porch where Grandma has her rocking chair.

All gone, all gone, both the people and the places. Gone from the earth, but not perished: for God will preserve His people; He will preserve every good thing. They live. The Lord hath spoken it.

You’re all invited to come again, anytime you please. Maybe next time we can hike off to Hangman’s Tree and tell some scary stories.

A Tiny Triumph (For Me)

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Image result for images of happy bike rider

For several weeks I’ve been trying to pedal up a long, low hill. I have to pedal standing up, which is harder than doing it sitting down, to generate more power. About three-quarters of the way up, my legs fail and it’s all I can do not to fall down.

The other day it seemed much harder than usual, my legs failed sooner, and I almost had a spill. Heading back home, I was almost there when I happened to glance downward, and discovered that my front tire was a wee bit flat. This happens to bikes that are kept outside, as mine is. So I went to the gas station down the block to pump up my tires.

After that, the bike felt downright sprightly, and I could hardly wait to tackle the hill again. The next day–whoosh! Straight up, all the way, with no fail at all.Victory at last!

The moral of the story is, a little more air, the proper amount, made all the difference. It was something which I should have remembered from my boyhood, but had quite simply forgotten because, let’s face it, about fifty years had gone by since I’d last filled bicycle tires.

Success does come a lot easier when you remember those basic preparations for it.

Some of Aunt Joan’s Life

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Image result for images of ocean liner postcard, 1958

Since so many of you have been praying for her, and she seems to be out of danger for the time being, I thought it only fitting that I ought to tell you a little more about my Aunt Joan–the last of my family in her generation.

Back in the 1950s and early 1960s, when hardly anybody else was doing it–in fact, you could get famous for doing this, if you wanted to–Joan and her sisters, Gertie and Millie, were world travelers. I mean, they went everywhere! And it was always an event when they came back with stories and a slide show. I’ll never forget the tale of how they wound up stranded at the Black Cat Cafe somewhere in Uganda, way back when, examining the varied and exotic wildlife that had taken up residence in their salad.

Joan, Gertie, and Millie got jobs as young women, fresh out of high school, which they kept for their whole working lives. How common is that anymore? They always had ample summer vacation time–especially Joan and Millie, who worked for school districts–in which to stage their travels.

It’s just too bad they didn’t keep journals. It was a very different world, that they traveled, and they knew it better than just about anybody.

Time Out for Kittens

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I can’t help it–I love kittens. Grown-up cats, too. If you don’t fall in love with the kitten hiding in the Kleenex box, well, I don’t know what can be done for you.

Have I told you that I once almost got my iguana into a dog food commercial? Unfortunately, I fell asleep and missed the audition. So stardom eluded him, and it was all my fault. I never told him, though.