Wednesday
15 February 2017

— Jolly Round Red Mr. Sun, as Thornton W. Burgess used to call him, is with us again today.

Good Morning All,

In truth, I was wondering what I might jot down here today until I got to 1954 up there. The DEW Line reminded me of when we were living in Rutland, MA, in 1980. Every Sunday morning, I would put Johs, who was three then, into his car seat and we would drive in our orange Volkswagen bug to the bakery in Paxton for doughnuts. Inside the shop, Johs at eye level with the pastries in the glass case, I would say, “Johs, whaddaya think, should we get those stinky old chocolate covered doughnuts or those nice brown plain ones?”

The first two times I asked, he really had to wrestle with the answer for adjectives had meaning for him quite early on. But it did not take long before he would pretend to go into deep thought and then say, “Well, maybe this time we should get the stinky old chocolate ones.”

My brother Norman was along on one such trip. It was winter, five or ten below. On the way home, the air in the car was suddenly thick with humanly produced methane. In the parlance of the fifth grade it would have been catagorized as an SBD, Silent But Deadly, as opposed to, say, an LBS, Loud But Sufficient.

Norman said, “Ron, I do know that Volkswagens are not known for their heating systems, but I’m not sure that you should feel personally obligated to--

“Me?!” I interrupted, shocked. “I’m innocent! It’s you! You can’t deny it.”

But he did, and we both turned to see little Johs strapped into his car seat, clutching the bag of doughnuts and fairly beaming at us.

This in turn lead to Pierce Family Rule #3. When traveling in our VW in winter, we were all honor-bound at such times as just described to provide Distant Early Warning. The offender was required to say “Dew Line” and to repeat it two or three or four times depending the urgency of the situation, so as to allow the rest of us to get our windows down in time. I can recall on one singular occasion repeating the phrase six times as quickly as I could, so that I sounded like that horn that goes off in submarines just before the captain hollers, “Dive! Dive!"

Since someone’s wife is now saying, “And I thought the toenails were bad," I shall close with a modest limerick:

While in group therapy with our shrink

Someone laid an egg that caused a stink.

What Freudian let slip this oyster on the sly

And diced these onions to make us cry?

Thanks for sharing is what I think.

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron