THEY SAID IT

"When life knocks you to your knees, which it always does and always will - well, that's the best position in which to pray, isn't it?" 

                                                                            - Ethel Barrymore

 

"In war there is no second prize for the runner-up." 

                                                        - Gen. Omar Bradley

 

Lorraine Cugat, accused of having 12 boy friends while married to rumba king Xavier Cugat: 

"I'm flattered at your confidence in my ability."

 
"A low neckline is something you can approve of and look down on at the same time." 

       - Night-club dancer Winnie Garrett

 
"Bend the knees, keep the body upright, take a firm grip on the object to be lifted and push forward with the leg muscles." 

   - Greater NY Safety Council on how to carry brides over the threshold

 
"We have got the bull by the tail and we've got to look him straight in the face and that's an extremely difficult operation." 

            - Retired Gen. Walter Krueger, on the Korean situation - 1950

 
"I told the doctor I was worried about my health, but he assured me I had no health to worry about." 

                             - Joe E. Lewis

 
"It goes like holy smoke." 

                      -Princess Margaret, referring to her new car. -  1951

 
"I find television very educational. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book." 

                                              - Groucho Marx

 
"A polite man is one who listens with interest to things he knows all about when they are told to him by a person who knows nothing about them." 

                          - Spain's Count Alfonso Medina

 
"No wonder her voice comes out so well. Look where it's been." 

                                  - Frank Morgan on Jane Russell's singing - 1949

 
"He is so tough, he's ashamed his typewriter has a ribbon." 

                                                                       - Harold Robbins

 
"Sex appeal seems to be something I just can't catch on a piece of canvas . . . nobody ever whistled at one of my women." 

                                                       - Norman Rockwell

 
"I'd throw it away tomorrow if I could find the right man. I want to get married and have three children. I'd much rather leave a few children as my contribution than the finest screen credits in the world." 

                                                                             - Lizabeth Scott

 
"People in my district don't want a housing bill. They live in log cabins, cover the roof with bull's hide and use the tails for lightning rods." 

                            - MO Rep. Dewey Short - 1949

 
"We do not want war any more than the West does, but we are less interested in peace than the West and therein lies the strength of our position." 

                                                         - Joseph Stalin

 
"An obedient wife married to a henpecked husband." 

                                    - resort owner Al Tisch on the ideal marriage

 
Historical novel: "A book with a shapely wench on the jacket but no jacket on the shapely wench." 

                         -Earl Wilson

 

 

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TURTLES

       "The first known ancestor of Archelon, and of all turtles, was discovered in Africa, where it lived more than two-hundred million years ago.  It took about twenty-five million years after that (in Triassic times) for the true turtles to develop.  From then on they flourished, spreading to all continents of the world as well as living in the seas.  Unlike the dinosaurs, which became well established at about the same time, these awkward, lumbering reptiles survived to be part of our modern world.  Sometimes they are called 'living fossils.'"

                                                  ~ from The Real Book About Prehistoric Life by Dorothy Shuttlesworth 

 

       Turtles are really neat!  They lived with the dinosaurs, and here they are.  Makes me feel really good to know that I've stopped to help them cross the road, and that I saw this one in our yard and just let it be.

 

 

 

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MAP TO THE GIANT SANTA

       I've written about this already in Running Away from Home at Age Three, but here's a more cartographic description of the situation.

 

This is a current map of the area in Everett

       I was only three but I wasn't dumb.  I knew how to get from Everett WA to the giant Santa Claus at the Northgate Shopping Center in Seattle.  In 1952 there were no freeways, and 99 was the main highway from Everett to Seattle, and, through Everett, Broadway was Highway 99.  So Billy and I, at my leading, walked down the alley between both our houses (Mom thought I was at Billy's house all the while), and when we got to the next street (18th), we turned toward Broadway, on the way passing the "witches'" house.

       I had to pee then, and somewhere across busy Broadway was a gas station, and I knew that gas stations have restrooms, so the two of us managed to cross the highway and get to the gas station, and there you'll need to go HERE to find the rest of the story. 

       The fact that we were three and people wouldn't let us make the journey, and the fact that it was almost 24 miles from my house to Northgate Shopping Center, and the fact that if we got to Northgate Way, we wouldn't have been able to read the street sign and turn left there to go a few blocks to the shopping center, although the giant Santa would be obvious I would think, and the fact that it was June and the giant Santa wouldn't be there, were things I didn't take into account.

 

 

 

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THE KNOT

 

       When I was little, I had a vast collection of toy vehicles, and whenever getting a new one, I would line up every one I had and place the new one at the end of the convoy that stretched across the dining room, through the hall and across the bedroom.  

       Here you see me with my U.S.-made Tootsietoy Cadillac.  It has a string tied to the front axle so I could pull it and make believe it was moving on its own.  I still have this Tootsietoy Cadillac, it still rolls on all four tires, and the now 75-year-old knot from the string is still tied to the front axle.

 

        I have a vivid memory of my youth, as is shown by countless memoirs in the Butter Rum Cartoon, edged between all sorts of other things.  This perhaps is because around the axle in the convoy of my life, the knot is still tied, still there.

 

 

 

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ANIMAL CRACKERS

 

Animal crackers, and cocoa to drink,

That is the finest of suppers, I think;

When I'm grown up and can have what I please

I think I shall always insist upon these.

 

What do you choose when you're offered a treat?

When Mother says, "What would you like best to eat?"

Is it waffles and syrup, or cinnamon toast?

It's cocoa and animals that I love the most! 

 

The kitchen's the coziest place that I know:

The kettle is singing, the stove is aglow,

And there in the twilight, how jolly to see

The cocoa and animals waiting for me.

 

Daddy and Mother dine later in state,

With Mary to cook for them, Susan to wait;

But they don't have nearly as much fun as I

Who eat in the kitchen with Nurse standing by;

And Daddy once said he would like to be me

Having cocoa and animals once more for tea!

 

                                                              ~ Christopher Morley 

 

 

 

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