HERE COME THE "...PEDES"

Many years ago I began keeping what I labeled as a "funny book" file. It had nothing to do with comics, but into it I put anything I found that made me laugh or chuckle. Most of the time it was a newspaper article: an engagement announcement that had a typo under the picture of a lovely young lady that gave her name as "Turdy" Smith. (Trudy was what they were going after, I'm sure.) Another time it was an exceptionally funny cartoon that wouldn't even be appropriate to post here but over which I still laugh when I see it.

Today's blog is based on a "Letters to the Editor" column from some past magazine I subscribed to. There originally was an article entitled "20,000 Legs Under the Sea" and the column I cut out were rebuttals to the author's Centipede Crotch Count. I saved it not so much because it was interesting (although it was) but because I was just astonished at how much time and effort people would put into such a subject.

Here are two of the more interesting responses:

1. “…a 100-legged centipede would have 98 crotches rather than 100. As every centipede knows, it takes two legs, branches or what-have-you coming off a trunk to form the angular area sometimes called a crotch. I therefore submit that a 100-legged centipede would have 49 crotches.”

2. “It may seem unbelievable but a 100-legged worm has more crotches than it has legs – 148…A centipede has 49 crotches on each side (defining a crotch as the space between any pair of legs), but a leg on one side of the centipede is also adjacent to a leg on the opposite side. Since there arer presumably 50 legs on each side, an additional 50 crotches must be added to the original 98, for a total of 148. The fallacy (in all published estimates so far) has been in thinking of single pairs of legs. In multi-legged animals each leg has many adjacent legs, all with crotches.”

What got me started this week of even thinking about centipedes was a picture in a newspaper of a millipede that was HUGE! I guess I surmised that a millipede would be smaller than a centipede, needing to be smaller, of course, -- I guess just because I thought a milli-anything would be smaller than a centi-anything. So much for my thought and reasoning process.

Anyway, in looking for photos to grace this blog, I discovered that the size of either is dependent upon the species. And although I have always had an interest in reptiles and lizards and other such things that most people aren't crazy about, in seeing pictures of what a centipede or a millipede CAN look like if you see the right kind I decided they needed to be put at the very bottom of my "like" list. I would pick up a snake or a tarantula, but never would I hold a huge millipede. It causes me to make a face just thinking about it.

As far as I am concerned, the number of crotches is about the only thing of interest concerning the "...pedes."

NO WAY, NEVER, NEIN, NOT ME!

I saw in yesterday’s paper this picture of the new observation platform at the Sears Tower in Chicago. I read the article, took a closer look at the photo and found myself shaking my head back and forth: NO WAY, NEVER, NEIN, NOT ME.

I am not prone to phobias, and I don’t have a fear of heights. I have been to the tops of the Eiffel tower, the Empire State Building and the World Trade Tower. I looked out, I looked down. I didn’t feel afraid, dizzy or compelled to throw myself over the railing of any of them.

Now, I am going to admit to one phobia, however, and it is a strange one but I will also tell you where it came from. I do not like to look into empty swimming pools. It is more than a not liking; it is actually an avoidance of looking in them. Now I wouldn’t cause a scene if I had to look in one but if there is any way to avoid looking, I will so avoid.

Why? Many years ago our Girl Scout troop in Long Beach took swimming lessons at the YWCA pool, which was an indoor pool. Those kids who weren’t having lessons could sit in the balcony and watch their friends swim. Some time between then and when I grew to be an adult I had a dream that I was in the balcony there in the Y. People were allowed to jump from the balcony into the water. Dreams make those kinds of things possible, you know. Suddenly someone jumped off the balcony, and between the time they started their jump and the time they got down to the water, all the water disappeared down a hole and the person hit the pool floor. Hot blood splashed up and over my body. End of dream. You can rightly call that dream a nightmare.

The first time I can remember avoiding an empty pool was during Easter break when I was in college and was working as a camp counselor in the mountains. It was not yet warm enough outside to fill the pool, so I spent the whole week trying to avoid looking at it. There aren’t a lot of occasions in life to see empty pools but through the years the dread has always been there. When we lived in the Greenwood house in Orange we had to have the pool drained and replastered once. I forced myself to go walk around inside the empty pool, hoping to desensitize myself. I knew where the phobia came from and I knew it was irrational and I hoped to get over it. I was a big girl now and didn’t need to carry that little phobia around with me any more. The best I can say is that I made it out of the empty pool without an episode of the “screeming meemies” but I still don’t like them.

I thought of this when I found my head going back and forth – NO, NOT ME, NEIN, NEVER – as I read the newspaper about the glass-bottomed observation platform on the Sears Tower. On a scale of 1 to 10, my swimming pool phobia rates a small “1” when measured against how I feel about either the Sears Tower or, worse yet, the glass walkway out over the Grand Canyon. I can hardly write about it without shaking my head. It may be a phobia or it may just be a smart decision on my part not to tempt fate – fate being maybe a stress fracture of the glass the minute I walk out on it and down I’d go.

No way. I get the head-shaking heebie-jeebies just looking at the picture. Now THAT is a phobia.

A CUTE JOKE FOR JULY 2

Scientists at NASA built a gun specifically to launch dead chickens at the windshields of airliners, military jets and the space shuttle, all traveling at maximum velocity. The idea is to simulate the frequent incidents of collisions with airborne fowl to test the strength of the windshields.

British engineers heard about the gun and were eager to test it on the windshields of their new high speed trains. Arrangements were made, and a gun was sent to the British engineers. When the gun was fired, the engineers stood shocked as the chicken hurled out of the barrel, crashed into the shatterproof shield, smashed it to smithereens, blasted through the control console, snapped the engineer's backrest in two and embedded itself in the back wall of the cabin, like an arrow shot from a bow.

The horrified Brits sent NASA the disastrous results of the experiment, along with the designs of the windshield and begged the US scientists for suggestions.
NASA responded with a one line memo: "Defrost the chicken."

ARE YOU OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER?

One of the books I refuse to give up to space consideration is my "Encyclopedia of Television Series, Pilots and Special, 1937-1973" by Vincent Terrace.

My whole upbringing is displayed in this book. While early TV had been around for a while before my family purchased our first set, my father brought one home in the late 40s because he had an appliance store, held an Admiral franchise, and as soon as he was able he offered them in the store and of course brought one to our house. You can imagine how our "stock" went up among both my folks' friends and relations and my sister's and my playmates.

We had rabbit ears on our TV set for a while, entertained lots of "snow" at various times on channels that weren't very strong, but yes, it revolutionized our life. For my sister and me it meant watching Shari Lewis and Lambchop, Beanie and Cecil, Ollie the Dragon, Sandy Dreams, along with roller derby, wrestling and eventually the Ed Sullivan show.

In the fifties and in my early married life we got to watch things like Dr. Kildare, Palladin, Gunsmoke, and, if you recognize the fellow above, Gardner McKay's "Adventures in Paradise," which had 91 episodes shown between 1959 and 1962 and is one of my all-time favorites, maybe next to "Hawaii 5-0."

This interesting book I have provides great fun and reminiscing. There is, or was to be, a second volume dealing with the years 1974 to 1984. I always intended to purchase it, too, but that fell by the wayside somewhere. But for the most part the earliest years are the ones that are of most interest to me. And the weird thing is that sometimes my recollections are very faulty. I was sure that Richard Chamberlain starred in "Adventures in Paradise" but in checking the book to confirm that, I found I was wrong; it was Gardner McKay. Ah, yes, I do remember now. He was a handsome fellow, just the kind a young teenaged girl in those days would fall for.

There also was to be a third volume, an index. If I had that, I'd offer to look things up for you. However, if you know the exact name of the program you are looking for between '37 and '73 and would like a few details about it, let me know and I'll "see what da' book sez."

JOHN, I CAN'T FIND YOU ANYWHERE!

The picture above is of John Breckinridge Preston McConnell and Narcissa Frances "Bonnie" Wright on their wedding day in Glasgow, Kentucky - July 3, 1865. The family bible shows he has those two middle names, but he always was shown on documents simply as John B. McConnell. Narcissa, except for listings on censuses and on her marriage license, was called Frances most of the time, and her grandchildren called her "Bonnie."

This much information was available to me when I first starting doing genealogical research in 1984. I've learned lots about her, but poor great-grandpa John is all but an unknown in my records. The McConnells moved to Kosse, Texas by 1880, where they had a small farm. They sold the farm in 1886 and from that point on I can't document him anywhere. Family lore is that they came to Colorado Springs when their son-in-law, an engineer for the Midland Railroad, was killed in a train crash in 1893. Family lore continues that they then went to Palisade, Colorado and for a short while owned an orchard; he missed the south so supposedly they went back to Texas, where he died in 1898. "Bonnie" moved back to Colorado by 1900 and her life is well documented from that point on.

Poor John has dropped off the radar screen after leaving Texas the first time, and I cannot find his burial place anywhere. I cannot find a grave in either Limestone or McLennan Counties, Texas, which are both mentioned in family stories. He is not buried in Palisade or Colorado Springs. Nor is he buried in his old Kentucky stomping grounds. Recently I hired a researcher to see if she could find deeds in Mesa County between 1890 and 1900 that would show him buying and/or selling property; there is no land record for John B. McConnell.

John is my great-great grandfather. I have this awful feeling that he is one of those people who simply are not going to be found. I hate to give up on the hunt, but I don't know where else to look. I keep hoping that one of these days someone is going to post online somewhere a cemetery transcription or burial records in which John B. McConnell b 27 September 1829 Kentucky shows up. If it is going to happen, it had better be sooner than later, as I am getting older every day and would like to have that tiny piece of information before I depart and become an ancestor myself.

ETTA

First, treat yourself to another viewing of the old movie, "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." Believe me, it has stood up well over these many years and you'll have as much fun seeing it this time as the last time.

Then, find yourself a copy of "Etta" by author Gerald Kolpan and settle in for a real romp.

What Kolpan has done is to give Etta a life beyond the movie. Actually, she was a real person, but there is nothing known about her beyond her escapades with the Hole in the Wall gang. So Kolpan has created a fictitious life for her to set the groundwork for how it was that she found herself with the outlaws, and then has carried her story, again all fictitious, after the deaths of Butch and Sundance.

Kolpan gave her an amazing life, which touches all kinds of well-known personages in the 1900 time frame. I found the book to be a real hoot. One of the reviews shown on the Barnes and Noble website called it a "picaresque novel." I had to look that one up and found the following: "Pertaining to, characteristic of, or characterized by a form of prose fiction, originally developed in Spain, in which the adventures of an engagingly roguish hero are described in a series of usually humorous or satiric episodes that often depict, in realistic detail, the everyday life of the common people." And yes, I'd say that applies to this novel.

Kolpan is an award-winning journalist and this is his first novel. I say more power to him. I look forward to the next one, which I hope will be as much fun to read as this one!

NO NOSE, NO MOUTH

Which wine would you choose if you were faced with the following descriptions?

Wine #1
Smell- spice and leather
Taste- sweet berry
Aftertaste - chocolate

Wine #2
Smell – mocha and eucalyptus
Taste - over-ripe plums
Aftertaste - black pepper

Wine #3
Smell - tar
Taste - chocolate and black raspberry
Aftertaste - oak and dried herbs

I have smelled lots of wine in my day, sometimes the house wine and sometimes the "pricey" stuff. I cannot smell ANY of the above smells. The smell I can identify is whether it is red or white wine.

I have tasted lots of wine in my day and again I have never been able to isolate a single taste. To me it tastes like either red wine or white wine.

And as for the aftertaste, I usually like it or don't like it, whatever "it" is.

My brother is a wine connoisseur and I have sat in many classes that he has given where wine tasting is part of the learning. But I obviously have not inherited the nose or the taste buds (or the brain, actually,) that my brother has.

The writer of today's wine feature in our newspaper apparently not only has an expert’s nose but he is able to write a whole column in which there is nothing that I understand. But I want to be sure you understand it is not he who is deficient; I am the one lacking something – a gene maybe – for smelling and tasting and understanding wine.

My wine identification skills are limited to knowing red from white, sparkling from still and sweet from dry. I can tell a Chardonnay from a Chablis when I taste them, but that's about as far as it goes. I have no wine sense at all. My only forte is knowing what I like and don't like when I taste it.

The fellow who wrote the wine article is pleased with his column, I'm sure. But he won’t know that the very same article has made me laugh because I perceive it as being full of pompous pronouncements more than anything else. And his very seriousness is what makes me laugh. I don’t think that is the intent of his column but that’s what I get out of it, and reading it sure made my day!