Monday
27 November 2017

— the palest lavender sky in the southeast

Good Morning All,

Today is Buffalo Bob Smith’s birthday, as I was reminded when I sent out my daily quiz to the ten of you who did not get them the first time around. Here’s the first question in today’s quiz:

1. Art/Culture: Born in Buffalo, New York, in 1917, he had a children’s tv show that included a red-headed, freckled marionette modelled after his sister Esther. Others on the show included Dilly Dally, Clarabell, Major Phineas T. Bluster, Flub-a-Dub, and PrincessSummerfallwinterspring. Hint: Gals.
A. Robert Keeshan  C. Robert Emery

B. Robert Emil Schmidt    D. Robert Barker  

The marionette, of course, was Howdy Doody, and at age nine or so I owned and loved my Howdy Doody marionette. He had a thousand-watt smile and always looked so glad to see me. I got good at the strings, so that I could walk him up and down the stairs and get him to lift his arm and flap his chin as he said, “Howdy!” (I, of course, was convinced I was succeeding as a ventriloquist, but I suspect my family members would abjure.)

Since I was a pretty dreamy kid and spent loads of time in my own company, Howdy became one of my best friends. We could chat for a half an hour while he walked around my room and told me how much he liked all the neat stuff I had in there. It is safe to say that Howdy and his jovial company afforded me some of the very best days of my middle childhood.

Even after the tsunami called puberty hit me, and Howdy went to live in the attic, I still sort of missed him. And when I did go up the attic for something, there he’d be hanging on his hook from the rafters, his head bowed, but still smiling, still ready to go for another walk around my room with me if I ever changed my mind, or at least forgave him for whatever crime he’d committed.

I mention all this because I have a friend who worries about my spending so much time in the past. I was trying to explain that I do not have a very good sense of time, that my entire past all seems to have happened not much more than yesterday, or a week at the most. Plus, I have also found that rooting about in my past quite often has an astonishing effect upon my present.

For example, while I was reading over today’s quiz, when I got to: "that included a red-headed, freckled marionette modelled after his sister Esther,” it suddenly hit me like a sledgehammer to the forehead: “Hey, wait a second, here! Could this possibly have anything to do with a certain red-headed, freckled lass with a sister named Esther?!?!”

The Britta in my head almost immediately responded, “Gee, there’s a compliment, Bheka! You fell in love with me because I reminded you of a plaster-headed string doll from your childhood?”

To which I almost immediately replied, “Well, maybe a bit, although mostly it was when you arrived at  the baseball game and "felt I like some watcher of the skies / When a new planet swims into his ken.”

Who can say how all that works, falling in love? There must have been thousands of reasons I fell in love with Britta, but … well, I did dearly love Howdy, strings and all. So, I’ll submit it is at least possible one of those thousand reasons could have been that I saw in Britta is a new-and-improved Howdy without the strings.

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron

P.S. Keep this under your hat, but on a kitchen shelf in our cottage we have a Dilly Dally glass that once held Welch’s grape jelly.

P.P.S. Johs’s 2 of Hearts snap in the Day Book was not a set up picture.

P.P.P.S. Two Holly snaps: