It's another of those things that seems odd now... I was thinking of the stamps retailers used to give out as incentives to shop at their stores... "Top Value" and "S&H Green Stamps". I think the IGA in the Smith Valley Shopping Center gave out Top Value stamps. My Mom would wait until she had lots and lots of them to add to the books you were supposed to stick them in, then she'd use a sponge to wet them and apply them to the books. We'd all look through the catalog they supplied to see how many stamp-filled books we had to accrue in order to get an appliance or some other doo-dad. More memories... Glasses or towels as premiums in boxes of laundry detergent. When I first set up independent housekeeping as a bachelor I think my cupboard was filled with glasses I got as premiums for buying gasoline at the "Gulf" Service Station... Whatever happened to "Good Gulf" gasoline?
When I went lookin' for an image of the stamps I found the above photo of the General Store in Nashville, Indiana. (Click it to see the full photo.) Stores don't actually give those things out anymore, do they?
Two weeks from tomorrow we'll be meeting in Evansville... Are ya comin'?
I was gonna regale ya here with details of our colonoscopies last week, but Hawkeye begged me not to, so I'll comply with his request. You do need to know one thing... Sara Jean chickened out. The day prior to our scheduled procedure, BEFORE she had started drinking the tasty "GoLytely", she started having diarrhea and throwing up... Nerves. And rightfully so. She has a strong gag-reflex so I sincerely doubted her ability to get a gallon of that stuff in her. Heck, I truly doubted she could get a full glass of it in her. So she called and told the folks what she was experiencing and they rescheduled her. We have now found that if she absolutely refuses to drink the GoLytely there is another way to get the job done... with a "Fleet Enema".(?) I'll let ya know more when I know more.
But for those that have not already read the play-by-play and are interested, you can go hereand maybe read more than you want to know on the subject. But let me re-emphasize here, if you are over 50 and have not yet had this procedure done, rememberFarrah, (maybe unnecessarily) dead at 62.
Shift gears now... I don't know about you, but this Man-made global warming is about to chill me to death! We have had jacket weather most nights for the last two weeks. The cold is also delaying growth in our garden. Sweet corn is ready to pick, but the ears are small. Tomatoes are growing slowly and most have spots or other problems making the fruit look ugly.
We are looking forward to seeing a bunch of you on the 15th. What time do you want to meet at theLog Inn for dinner... Want to beat the normal dinner crowd? Is 5 P.M. better, or would you rather eat at a more normal 7 P.M. or so? (Consider we may want to visit a while after eating.) Please make your thoughts known.
Hawk and his Mrs. are coming, as are TC and Sharon, TD and Cinders, and Cissy and Leroy(?) Didn't I also see that Echo and Shifty are coming? Sara Jean and Greybeard will be there. How 'bout you? Are you coming?
I had to think a while about embedding this video here... It was popular in 1956, just about the time I really started paying attention to music. As a matter of fact, my interest in this stupid tune may have led to my paying closer attention to ALL music on the radio and elsewhere. But 1956? Who's gonna remember that? Some VK's weren't yet born!
Other novelty tunes come to mind: "Purple People Eater", "My Friend The Witch Doctor", "The Monster Mash"... And you can probably name several more. I thought they were goofy, but fun. Other than the song parodies by "Weird Al Yankovic" I can't think of many novelty tunes being produced today, and that seems a shame. We could sure use a little more goofiness in our lives, couldn't we?
Sara Jean lives with "Goofy" every day! It's Friday... What's goofy with you?
Here we go again... As a "Valley" guy, I'm beginning to be a little shy about telling stories that show how much more fun we had than those that lived elsewhere. But we DID have fun, and we knew we lived in a special place and LOVED it!
At about this time of year there would be a festival at the Smith Valley Community Center. I can remember a huge deep-fat fryer and lots and lots of delicious fresh fish being served there. Our family simply referred to this festival as "The Fish Fry", and it was a big deal- Live music, lots of booths displaying arts and crafts and other doo-dads for sale. Games of chance... The Fish Fry always drew a big crowd... It was very much like a Mini-County Fair.
I remember one year they had a dunk-tank to raise money for charity. Diana D's Dad was the "monkey" in the tank. For a buck you got three baseballs to try to hit a lever that would drop the seat from beneath Diana's Dad and dunk him in a three-feet-deep reservoir below. It was a hot night and I remember thinking it might be refreshing to be dunked now and then, so I asked him if I could be the "dunkee". I think he pulled a "Tom Sawyer" on me... "Oh no, this is too much fun. I really don't want to give up the job." But I begged, and he relented. I ran home and put on my swimming trunks. It only took about three or four dunkings for the "refreshing" dip to get old. I think I was the monkey for an hour or so before Diana's Dad took pity on me and sent me home to put my street clothes back on.
My memory of the Fish Fry was tweaked by Crown and Coke's comments about the Johnson County Fair this week. (By the by, how'd that go C&C?)
How long has it been since they had a festival at the old SVCC? I know I'd gladly drive the distance home to attend one!
Okay, by now you know the routine- It's Friday... WHASSUP?
It's a big weekend for us... Big Bubba is coming home. We haven't seen him since we went out to Arizona in February, so absence has certainly made our hearts fonder. Monday is his birthday... he'll be 26. Time does fly, doesn't it? He'll be here a week. We have all sorts of things we would like to do with him but we don't want to overdo... So we'll make suggestions and allow him to make selections ala carte. One of the options is to go to St. Louis for the fireworks display. They do it REALLY BIG there... They pull a barge out in the middle of the river in front of the Arch, and in front of hundreds of thousands of spectators on the Arch grounds, shoot fireworks from the barge for half an hour. I'm told these displays, sponsored by Macy's department stores, cost nearly a million dollars. I believe it too... Unlike the displays we saw as kids, there is never a second where the sky doesn't have one, or several explosions entertaining you.
I have fuzzy memories now of going to the Meridian Drive-In theater on July 4th to watch the fireworks display there. I can't remember... did they shoot the fireworks between movies or at dusk?
We will have a good week catching up on life with our son. I hope your weekend will be a safe one, whatever your plans. So what are your plans?
