Flash from the Past

I was just talking to my sister about kids and electronics these days (don't get me started), and I remembered my dad buying a Commodore 64 computer.


He got a magazine that had programming for different games and things you could do, and in the back was the code that you typed in. I typed 80 wpm because of my high school Typing 1 and 2 classes (even took Shorthand 1 and 2 - I was all set for secretaryin'!), so he'd ask me to type everything in for him, then we'd play the games.


If there was a glitch, which was kind of frequent when they went to binary code, which was all 1's and 0's, he'd sit next to me and read it line by line while I looked for my error. It was pretty cool to watch a game come to life just because you typed thousands of 0's and 1's.

On a different track, have you read The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini? They're fantastic, right? Depressing, but ultimately fantastic. Well, I'm reading And the Mountains Echoed, which is his latest book.


People, I'm talking DEPRESSING. And it's one hit after another. At least with The Kite Runner, it's the 2 boys, and the awful thing happens, and then this is how life moves on. Well with this one, an awful thing happens in the first 10 pages. Then a different awful thing happens in the next 30 pages. Then somebody else's life is ruined. It's just one thing after another. The big difference is that you move on quickly to another character, so BAM, they're devastated, then we move on to see how that affected everybody else. I'm about three quarters done with it, so I'll see if we circle around to the beginning, which is what I think happens.

It better end on a good note, or I'm going to need some Lexapro....which I thought I was going to need anyway this weekend for some reason, but my mood has lifted to the point of mania. Wonder if I'm manic-depressive? What did you say? No, I'm not hearing voices...wait, was that you talking?

Ultraman to Save the Day!

I squealed in the bookstore - who remembers Ultraman??? Scott, you'll remember we watched this every afternoon - he fought Godzilla and other Japanese monsters. He looked like steel, but was actually more like polyester when he moved with unsightly wrinkles. He did some karate moves and flew through the air, and he shot lasers from his eyes. What was the thing on his chest for - it blinked when his time was up or he was in danger or something. Tracey, I bet you don't remember it, do you? I may go back and get it - totally awesome! We now return to our original programming.

New Look!

I think this background complements my new hairstyle below much better. Makes me feel warmer and more vibrant...much like my NEW BOOTS!

I had 2 pairs of boots when I was about 7 or 8 years old. The white lace-up boots were my "go-go boots" and I felt very snazzy in them, though in pictures I just look like Ruby Sue from Christmas Vacation - very red-neck. The black ones were zip-ups and I didn't wear them too much - also very red-neck. I looked like the kind of dirty kid with unbrushed hair who went in grocery stores barefooted. And I did do that - I remember the last time I was barefooted in the Super Valu, I believe it was, with my mother. She saw a friend of hers and I almost died of shame. I was probably 11 or 12 then - just white trash barefooted in the grocery store. What were we thinking? I swore to never go barefooted in a store again.

So since then I've always wanted sophisticated pointy boots with decent heels to wear with a cute skirt and tights which make my legs look shapely. Well that would've been nice in my 20's, but at 42 I think it's pushing the envelope. Plus my calves are about 5 inches around so creating the look of shapely legs will involve duct tape, according to the boot saleman at Dillards (I didn't understand it either).

Well, anyway, I bought a great pair on sale at Penney's and will wear them with long skirts and pants. And boy do I feel snazzy again!

I'm Feeling a Little Sicky-Poo

"Sicky-poo" came from the brilliant "Murder by Death" which was a TV movie spoofing murder mysteries in the 1980's. Peter Sellers starred with David Niven and the red-headed lady who pushed the "quicker-picker-upper" and a bunch of other famous people back then, and they played famous detective duos that come together at a mansion for a party, then have to solve a murder. Truman Capote also starred as the host who's supposedly murdered at his own party. They're all attacked eventually, and the 2 English ladies are in a room filled with poison gas, but they survive because the old chick in the wheelchair who's hard of hearing breathed all the gas while the other one covered her face. She says she's "sicky-poo" as they're on their way to the hospital. It's really funny - you should rent it!

So I'm sicky-poo with a terrible sinus infection (it's NOT the flu....I don't think...) but still had to work, and Scott took issue with that. He thinks I'm terrible for spreading my germs (I follow a strict hand-washing and sanitizing procedure before every patient and have not coughed or sneezed in a room once!) but I countered that if I cancelled they would have to be re-scheduled for next week or go to the ER. I reminded him that Dr. Gray worked through the flu at least one time that I could remember.

He said, "Well I recall another doctor who was a little older. He may have been before your time. I believe his name was Hippocrates, and he said, 'First, do no harm.'" I was very impressed that Scott knew some medical history, but I countered with the fact that I also knew an old doctor named Kervorkian, who had a little different policy.

I don't know who won that argument, but I admitted 2 patients to the hospital today and set another one up for surgery at the big university hospital up north, so maybe I WAS needed after all; you make the call. (And if you caught a cold from me, I'm REALLY sorry!)

Audiotape and 6th Grade Girls

I wish I had the audio to post - it's so much better than reading it. Janet and Amy and I had hours of fun one day with an old reel-to-reel tape recorder my dad had. You could record something then play it in reverse, speed it up to sound like a chipmunk, or slow it down. So much fun! The funny thing is that we chose to say stuff like "U-T-Rus" and "fallopian tube" then speed it up. After each word there were just gales of chipmunk laughter at how clever we were.

Then we wrote some jingles for common household products, which I would like to share with you now. This first one was originally a religious song about snow-white doves as far as I can remember, but we sang about Dove soap.

"On the wings of a snow white dove,
I was taken to my tub.
And there I found some Dove."

The chorus is "Dove...dove.....dovedovedovedove" and repeat.

The next was the real winner. I don't think Duffy Sausage was real - we always ate Jimmy Dean - but for some reason we sang about Duffy. Now one person is chanting "Duffy" in the background while the other sings, and the rhythm is sort of like a train on the tracks, if that makes any sense (I know it doesn't).

Duffy, duffy, duffy, duffy
Kill the pig, kill the pig, kill the pig, kill the pig.
Waaaah, waaaaah, waaaah, waaaaah
The pig's dead! The pig's dead!
Take-it-to-the-store, take-it-to-the-store (sung rapidly)
Eat the pig! Eat the pig!
Duffy, duffy, DUFFFF-EEEEEEE, DUFFF-EEEEEE!!!

All of that was in a minor chord till the last line when it changed to a major chord with beautiful harmony.

I think we wrote other jingles, but these were the only ones that came to mind at the time. And yeah, I get that it's really funny in my head, but loses a whole lot in print. Maybe one day I'll find that tape and play it for you. THEN you'll laugh!

TV Updates

So I talked to my brother and we got it all figured out:

Johnny Gage was my hottie on Emergency! and following the ambulance sounds in the opening there were squelches from the PA system - all sort of musical with a beat, huh! Scott even remembers how they signed off with the station when they were done with a call, but I forgot already.

On S.W.A.T. you had Deacon, or "Deke" as the black guy, and Hondo as the leader.

The father-son show I was trying to think of was Barnaby Jones, starring.....Buddy Ebsen. (Really? Jed Clampett in the rickety truck was Barnaby Jones???) Scott remembered that Lee Meriweather played his able female assistant, but we blanked on who the younger guy was. Wellllll, doggie!

And how could I forget Mod Squad? My first guess on their names was Jan, Luke, and Cornelius (probably thinking of Brady Bunch, The Rifleman [corrected from The Gunslinger], and Planet of the Apes). Scott aptly remembered that it was Julie, Link, and Peter. I don't remember much about that except the groovy clothes they wore - bell bottoms and headbands with psychedelic shirts and sunglasses. Just such the polar opposite of Michael Douglas and Karl Malden in Streets of San Francisco.

Well, thinking of old TV shows makes me feel better about the Mad Cow. Probably better than Sudoku, which I was doing religiously to stave off cerebral atrophy (brain rot). Next post, maybe we'll talk about shows we had to watch while staying with the grandparents - get ready for Lawrence Welk, Jimmy Swaggart's Gospel Hour, and The Grand Ole Opry. Good times, good times.....

We Watched Too Much TV

Adam-12 - Adam-12, see the man. Sounded like a Dick and Jane novel every week. "'Scuse me, I gotta go see a man...." Martin somebody was the blonde driver I think. Blanking on the partner - he had to be brunet (I think you spell it like that for a man - I could be wrong.) to fit the formula. Oh yeah - kind of a quiet guy, never said much. Seemed sort of dull to me. They improved on this formula with Emergency!

Emergency! This was my first big-time crush - the brunet smart-alecky guy - what was his name? Roy was his blonde partner, a little chubby. The really funny guy was Chet with the big mustache back at the station - he looked just like my cousin B.R. Maybe that show is why I wanted to be a doctor. That's the first time I heard the term "Ringer's," as in "I'm running a bag of Ringer's, Doc." Don't forget Dixie the sexy blonde nurse. They took a risk with an older woman, but it paid off - nurses always know more than the doctors and she was right up there with Dr. What's-his-name (mostly referred to as Doc), also a sexy black-haired guy. If he wasn't sure what to do, Dixie always had a suggestion. You know, she looked a lot like Angie Dickinson and had that same gravelly voice. There was definitely a formula for these shows. (The theme song started out with an ambulance sound: Weee......Wooo......Weee......Wooo.....that's all I remember.)

S.W.A.T. - Precursor to Hill Street Blues, I think. There was no formula here, just sexy men with all different hair colors. I don't even think there was a woman on the show. The only name I remember is Deluca, on whom I had a crush. He was Italian. Now was Adrian Zmed on this? I think I'm confusing it with T.J. Hooker (back to the formula). (By the way, here's the theme song phonetically and moving down the keyboard with each repeat: na-na-naaaaa, na-na-naaaa, na-na-naaaa, na-na-naaaaa, na-na-NA-NA! Now repeat in a higher key. Can you hear it?)

Some Old 70's Shows

I was thinking about police mysteries the other night. They were a far cry from CSI and these other crime shows where you see all the blood and gore.

McMillan and Wife - Sexy married couple solves mysteries - I can't remember exactly what kind. Guns were always involved, and lots of slinky tops and dresses plus high heels. It really seems like Rock Hudson was McMillan - that can't be right. He appeared on Carol Burnett sometimes. [News Flash: It WAS Rock Hudson - I googled it. Sister 1, Mad Cow 0] Also Susan St. James was the wife - I cheated and looked. I just remember her coming down the stairs in the intro - made me want to grow up and wear sexy black pantsuits (or glittery black tops).

McCloud - Yucky-looking Dennis Weaver rides down the street on a horse wearing a cowboy hat...Dennis, not the horse. His kind of high-pitched whiny voice and the over-large mustache turned me off to the show. But I do remember the intro music - not very good either. Nope, didn't really like that one.

Police Woman - Of course this was everyone's Dad's favorite show. Angie Dickinson - - Rrrrrrrroowwwww! Come to think of it, our family friend Rexie sort of looked like Angie Dickinson. At least in my Mad Cow-ridden brain, they blend together. (a Rexie-ism for my sister: Hey babe) Now Angie's boyfriend was also a little wimpy if I remember correctly - I didn't like him. When you think about it, they were kind of hard up for sexy male actors in the police-mystery genre. The next one proves my point.

Columbo - So squinty-eyed and short. Funny, though. Kind of like Gilligan's Island meets Ironsides - ooh! There's another one that we watched - Raymond Burr in a wheelchair in life-threatening situations every week - good stuff!

Rockford Files - The exception to the above rule. Not terribly good-looking, but just something about his attitude made James Garner good.

Now there was also something called Banacek that I vaguely remember, but it was tougher and grittier and came on later at night. Maybe we weren't supposed to watch that one. That guy looked like Al Pacino and probably used stronger language than McCloud. And there was something with an old guy and his son or his younger apprentice - blanking on that one. It wasn't Sanford & Son, and it wasn't Chico & the Man....I'll keep working on that one.

Couple of Old Sayings

I thought about some things we used to say as kids:

"You stink like cyarn!"
I don't know how to spell it but it rhymes with yarn. Somebody told me that the paper plant used a ditch filled with water, and when the water evaporated the "cyarn" was the chemical left over and made a terrible smell. Now cyarn doesn't sound like a chemical name to me, and it pretty much stunk all the time around the paper plant, so what gives? Anyone with paper-producing expertise?

"He's dead as a doornail."
I used to think it was a nail in a door, but I think it's really spelled doorknell because I read that word somewhere, but now the Mad Cow has stolen the truth from me. Anyone?

Also, for some reason that made me think of the time I was in the 4th grade and got to go the regional spelling bee (I won at school on the word parallel after a smarmy 5th grade boy demonstrating a superior attitude spelled it paralell). Some teacher drove and another named Miss Moore rode in the front, then myself and a girl named Ruthie were in the back. Winston may have been in there too, because I remember being crowded and sitting on the hump in the middle. Anyway, Ruthie was telling us all the chores she had done so far: got up at 5 AM to feed the animals and fix breakfast for her brother, etc. and I asked her if she lived on a farm (because doesn't it make sense that if you get up that early and do chores you might be a farmer?). Miss Moore proceeded to bust a gut laughing for some reason which I didn't understand and said, "Arnold, you crack me up." (She always called me Arnold, which made me feel that I, the homeliest nerd in class, had a cool nickname. But now that I think about it, I think she called everybody by their last names.)

More Thoughts on My Grandmother

I miss the old days. I miss going to Mamaw's house after church for Sunday dinner. (Hey Grampa, whaaaaaaat's for dinner? HeeHaw, anyone?) There was a meat plus creamed corn, black-eyed peas, collard greens (never touched the stuff myself), fresh cornbread and sweet tea. My special concoction was to mix the corn and black-eyed peas then crumble the cornbread over it and mix it up - YUM! And we were taught how to make a cornbread shake I guess, by crumbling the cornbread in a bowl of milk and eating it with a spoon - also good eats. But the first time I did that in front of non-family I was greeted with "What the HELL are you doing?"

And this dinner at Mamaw's was in the 70's and early 80's, not the late 80's when she moved in with us after my grandfather died and dinner was a sliced-up tomater and 4 green onions! Where the hell's the cornbread?! By then she was being a little passive-aggressive that the family now consisted of my mother coming home late from work, and Tracey and me sometimes. Scott was off at college, so until he came home there would be no 4-course meal.

Some more funny things I remember:
1) Mamaw didn't mind tickling your back, but it was more of a back SCRATCH, so you could only stand it for a couple of minutes. Maybe that's how she avoided having to tickle for long periods of time.
2) She held the steering wheel at 7 and 5 o'clock and didn't turn the wheel hand over hand. She scooted one hand over to the other and pulled the wheel, then did this repeatedly till she was done. She also drove really slow when I was young, and much faster when I was older.
3) She liked to get silly and dance sometimes, but they had the worst albums at their house - Eddie Arnold (one album featured Kay Arnold!), Make the World Go Away, Tennessee Ernie Ford. The best one was jokes told by that country fella with a cousin named Cletus who said "Hawwwwwwww" all the time - Mad Cow's got his name. (addendum 6/15/09 Jerry Clower)
4) She called my grandfather by his last name his whole life, but called her 2nd husband by his first name.
5) After my grandfather's funeral we spent the night with her, and as we were going to sleep she said, "I know I talked ugly to him, but I miss old Papaw."

Now I've done made myself cry, so I guess that's all I have to say about that.

Flash from the Past

From the Sunday, June 14, 2009 Mobile Press, authored by Debbie Freeland:

"Patsy Fincher took first place in the Appetizers Cookoff sponsored by the Mobile County Farmers Federation Women's Committee at the Jon Archer Agricultural Center. Her winning dish was special spinach dip. Quanna Driskell took second place with her snowpeas with chicken, and Maxine Wahl won third place with her stuffed bread appetizer."

Now read this out loud, but do a couple of things first:
1. Drop your R's
2. Channel Olympia Dukakis from Steel Magnolias (do NOT imitate Julia Roberts - totally unauthentic)

This should now come out, "Pat-seh Finchuh took fuhst place..." Are you smiling yet?

Now this just put a huge smile on my face because there's a picture of 3 smiling ladies holding trays of food, and I thought couldn't that be me? Wouldn't my grandmother be proud of me for that? That's such a Sylacauga-ish article and I imagine Irene reading it and saying, "Well I declare! Looka-here Sherry Nell at these ladies. I've got to call Mattiebelle (yes, really) and tell her to look at the paper."

My grandmother's friends were all so nice and one of them even sewed a prom dress for me (that would be the dear sweet Mattiebelle, who seemed to be about 6 feet tall somehow). Now they were all nice except for that one who thought she was "Miss Asterbutt" and had to be told to "step to hell!" (I sense that my mother is now picking up the phone to call me and give me a tongue-lashing for this one.)

Their conversations were so funny - which grocery store had their tomatoes on sale and for how much, what they were wearing to the Eastern Star meeting, how was that new catfish restaurant that opened last week. But the absolute best phone call of all: "Hey...I heard they got Mrs. Johnson up at the funeral home. Let's ride up there and see how she looks." If I'm lyin', I'm dyin' (and feel free to come on by). I guess in a small town if you know the undertaker, you can get a backstage pass before the show.

Making a Scene

Dang my new laptop with Vista! I wrote something and tried to post it last night but it got erased - didn't even save it! Or maybe dang Blogspot! Dang somebody! Well what was so important last night was that my favorite scene from a movie is Sally Field in Punchline (also starring John Goodman and Tom Hanks) where she rushes home with takeout food to throw on the table for her husband's boss's big dinner she's hosting. She and the kids rush into their pantyhose and dresses then throw all the food into bowls to look home-cooked, and she yells for the kid to go long when she throws the bread from the kitchen to the dining room. Then after dinner they find a shoe in the fish tank. (It was so funny last night when I was thinking about it.)

So yesterday I played the part of Sally Field after running home from the dentist with 1 hour to feed the kids and get to Scouts. (We did homework in the car and the dentist's waiting room; thanks for asking.) I threw tortellini and sauce on the stove (I love you Bertolli!) then ran to change clothes, then ran back to grab dishes and ran around the table setting it. It was actually fun pretending to be Sally, but nobody was around to yell "go long!" to; and it was sliced bread, not a loaf of French, so the aerodynamics wouldn't have been good anyway. And the kids got into the act with Lucas running in needing help tucking his Scout shirt into his pants, etc. I'll have to get that movie and show them the scene so they can appreciate the humor in it. Yes, there is always humor in stress, sometimes you just have to look REALLY hard.

Precious Angels Singing....and Stretching

I can't make it to the actual performance so I went to the dress rehearsal (because I really am a good mother - really), and here's a little sample. I have another clip where he actually smiles at me, but then I apparently develop Parkinson's and it is nausea-inducing for the viewer, so we'll skip that. The great thing about this clip is the kids on either side of him. Who thinks it's a good idea for first graders to stand in hot choir robes for 30 minutes singing song after song? I honestly thought the little girl next to him was fixing to faint at one point.

I think we should get back to the cheesy little plays we used to do. Like in the 5th grade when the "chorus" (i.e. kids like me who weren't cute enough to get a speaking part) had to pass around a plate of cookies and say in unison, "Thank you, Mrs. Claus." Except we were all too shy to actually say it, so the plate just kept getting passed around till the teacher said it for us.

Or in the 6th grade when I actually did get a speaking part as Anne from England where I had to describe the Christmas tree being kept in the bathtub and presents being left in our shoes, and Daddy tried to bribe me to say, "and we have a BLOODY good Christmas!" Mother took me aside and told me that would be cursing, so I better not do it. Another early opportunity at comedy missed....

Clarification on Dr. Pepper at 5 AM

It has come to my attention that my implications were misunderstood about breakfast with the Bonners. I preferred runny eggs to Mamaw's, which I thought were a little dry and overdone. Momma had the winners clearly. They also did not leave us alone - Papaw was always home if Mamaw had to work. We were never endangered.

That is all.

Dr. Pepper at 5 AM?

Okay, do you people remember breakfast at Mamaw's house? She'd wake us up around 5 AM and she'd fixed scrambled eggs (1 apiece, which was brown, non-runny, and crispy somehow - not like Momma's) with toast which was always sunken in with butter in the middle and a little burned around the edges (done in the oven, not the toaster oven like we had). And to top it off, a Dr. Pepper, icy cold! Oooh, that was such good stuff! And she had to go to work at the phone company in Birmingham, so she'd leave and we'd go back to bed after breakfast. Good times, good times.

But I have to ask - why did our parents leave us with her overnight when she had to work the next day? Did she work on weekends or did they just go out a hell of a lot????? Of course, they were in their 30's, so there you go.

Songs from the 70's

A couple of weeks ago Dean and I were in a gift shop and I heard the strains of "I got a brand new pair of roller skates..." I gasped and looked at Dean, who had heard the music and shot me a warning look immediately. That look says "Don't start singing or I'm walking out." (I get that look a lot.) I used to lie in bed at 404 and sing that song with the radio. Oh, and this was a favorite for a while - I loved me some Andy Gibb! Now I don't recognize anything about this song other than the chorus; don't know why it was so great.

There was also something called "Shadow Dancing," possibly by the Gibbs, that a girl at Shorter College used to re-enact (remember, that's when they sent me away in the 5th grade and I only lasted 3 or 4 days out of 2 weeks). I think her name was Frannie and we called her the "Shadow Dancer," so maybe that wasn't the name of a song, just that she danced to the Gibbs' music behind opaque glass walls in the cafeteria, and finally got caught. Yes, apparently that was against the rules. Now it's a very popular thing to do in clubs at Vegas......I'm told......I've certainly never seen it for myself.....why would you think that?......please stop looking at me now.

And while I was talking to Scott one day, he said, "Remember this one?" On his radio, somehow (must be satellite), was "Billy don't be a hero." I had to belt it out since the only person around was Lucas, who understands that sometimes Mom needs to sing rather loudly. "Billy don't be a hero, come back and make me your wife. And as he started to go....I said Billy keep your head low-oh-ho, Billy don't be a hero; come back to me...." I asked Scott if he was impressed I knew the words. He said he had a headache from my being behind his radio by a couple of seconds due to the cell phone delay.

I think Tracey's really the only one who can appreciate my singing. Right, Tracey? Hey, right Tracey? Uh, Tracey?