How... Mad... Was... She...?

My mother once said, "I got so mad that I had to make a metaphor to express it.  Then I got so amused at the metaphor, that I forgot what I was mad about."

The metaphor:  I was mad enough to eat nails without taking their heads off.

Penny for your thoughts

One day in 1910 Bertha Relph opened her change purse onto the sewing table because that had the most light. She began sorting through the pennies. Most bore the familiar Indian Head design, but here and there were the bright new Lincoln Head cents.

She was pleased with the design for Lincoln was one of her favorite presidents. Taft, well, he’s all right and if women were allowed to vote she would consider him, but Lincoln was a president to be proud of.

Each time she found a Lincoln Head penny, she would turn it over and look carefully at the lower edge. She was searching for three small initials: VDB. She knew that in 1909 the San Francisco mint had coined 750,000 pennies with the initials of Victor D. Brenner, the designer of the coin, embossed on the back. 750,000 may sound like a lot of coins, but when the mint was issuing millions, the VDB was pretty rare.

She found only one of these special coins. She carefully wrapped it in tissue paper and put in a corner of her bureau drawer.

There it stayed until her youngest daughter, Ruth, had a son. She took the coin and passed it to her daughter saying, “Take this coin and save it for Charles until he is old enough to take care of it. It is rare and will be very valuable someday.”

I am Charles, and when I was a teen ager my mother passed the coin to me and told me that my grandmother had predicted its growing value and wished me to have it.

I have it still. My 1909 S VDB Lincoln cent is not out on display, but is locked safely away. Its value had passed the $1000 mark the last time I checked. Bertha must be pleased.

She might also be pleased if I pass it to one of my grandchildren and say, “Take care of this. It’s a gift to you from your great- great-grandmother.”

History of One Blogger

When I was in Junior High School, a friend published a four-page, mimeographed newspaper for his friends.  He called it the Sunmont Bee. The name Sunmont came from the top line of a calendar: Sun, Mon, T(ues). Circulation at one time reached a peak of 40 copies.  To fill space, I was permitted to write a column of junior high gossip.  You know, like, "JerryT. likes Amanda M.  At least he gives her his Hershey Bar at lunch every day.  But he doesn't know that she gives half to Nancy G.  Shh, don't tell him."

My friend, Bob Norris, now a professor emeritus of University of California, Santa Barbara, considered this kind of gossip to be drivel, and named the column Dribble.

In Van Nuys High School, I became first, assistant editor, and then co-editor of the school paper, The Mirror, and I had a general interest column, and I kept the name Dribble. I freely stole ideas from a column that my father had run in Beverly Hills in the 1920's. One item "We call ourselves we in this column because all great editors call themselves we, and we hope to be a great editor someday." I think he, in turn, stole that from E.B.White, who really was a great editor.

In my forties, I learned to fly.  Subsequently I bought an Ercoupe, a 1946 two-place, low-wing, single-engine monoplane  Ercoupe owners formed a club and printed a newsletter, Coupe Capers.  For while I was editor and wrote such things as:

Heard from the tower.

Me: Castle tower, this is Ercoupe one six Hotel.  Crossing the Jet Advisory area, landing at Merced.

Castle Tower: Roger, one six Hotel.  Watch out for jets.

(That was my advisory?)

Me:  Ah, sir, would you ask the jets to watch out for me, too?

And then many years later, I learned about blogging.  I started a journal and named it Dribble, after those column of long ago.

And in it I wrote such things as this.

No Discipline

I scold myself for my lack of self-discipline.  It is 3 am and I am in bed, when I think of something I want to edit in my journal.  I get out of bed, fire up the old Hewlett-Packard, and start working on the Journal.  But, tomorrow is the day that I get to sit in with my harmonica on George Loscalzo, our piano player at the old folks home. I need my rest. 

That's not George in the picture there.  That is my son-in-law Roddy Jackson, and my grandson. They have played here too.

Photo scavenger hunt for your name

Krissy asks us to find a photo for each letter of our first name.  Will this count?>>

 

Chuck

An Open Book

It is nice to have someone who can read me better than I can read myself.  I have been sitting at the computer this morning, falling asleep.  I shake my head and read on.  I remember that I had thought yesterday about taking a Sunday Drive today.  The major part of the country is blizzard locked, so taking advantage of California climate ought to be a good idea.  But, if one is tired?

I called my girl friend and asked if she would like to take a Sunday drive.  "If you want to," she said. "You don't sound like you want to go."

Hmm, she is right, I thought I wanted to go, but somehow, pleasant winter weather notwithstanding, I think I'd rather wait.  She suggested  "We can go another time."  Bless her heart.  She made it possible for me to read myself.

It is nice to have someone in tune with me, in sync. I am glad to be read.

Saturday Six

Here's another on line game.  Patrick asks questions to answer in our journals.

1. Which of the following is your favorite store and why?  
A) Wal-Mart
B) Target
C) K Mart
D) Sears

Target.  I love to cruise through the aisles on the electric cart they provide.  The sell things that I didn't even know had been invented.  Electronic gadgets and such.

2. How far does your closest friend who's not in the same town as you live, and when was the last time you saw them in person?

Hundreds of miles.  I haven't seen her in a year and half.  But I keep in touch by long distance phone calls, about an hour everyday.  Had to get a special phone service to keep from going broke

3. Have you ever gone on a date with someone you met online?  Would you?

Yes, and it was charming.  She came to my town with her son, first, to check me out.  Then we went to Disneyworld and Cape Kennedy on one trip and to Williamsberg and Washington D.C. on another.  We took a cruise to Alaska that was fine. The romance was fine, but I didn't want to move fer away from my family so we drifted apart, but remain friends.

4. What is your favorite novel and what makes it stand out for you?

Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.  Twain shows the evils of slavery and discrimination through his unsophisticated hero Huck.  Huck and Jim travel through adventures just fine as companions.  Jim has no trouble until Tom Sawyer shows up and messes up everybody's life.

5. You get snowed in at your home for three days.  You have power and telephone service, but no way to leave the house.  How will you amuse yourself?

Unless someone tells me I am snowed in, I might not even notice.  I would be working on my journal and reading journals of others, just like I do now.

6. A fellow journaler you consider a friend disappears from J-land.  Visitors leave comments in the journal but they get no response.  You send the journaler an E-mail to make sure everything is okay, and despite the fact that you see that it has been read, you get no reply.  What do you do?  

I'd write a long personal letter and send it U.S. Mail.  If he didn't answer I would forget it.  There are too many plausible reasons for his not writing for me to expect some dire reason.