‘Out-of-the-mouths of Babes’ quotations made Art Linkletter’s book famous. We grandparents and parents have enjoyed the same blessings. I’ve collected a few. Grandmother Louise explained, at some length, the new word ‘museum’ to little Amanda. She answered, “Oh, you mean a Looking Place.” Her youngest granddaughter Michaela told her to stay a little longer. “You don’t have to go home. There’s nobody there, you can do anything you want to.” Son Tony returned from his
Category: Family
Christening Makaleka
Old 1985 photo documents when the ship’s dinghy was launched and manned by two grandsons. Britt is the red-headed ten-year-old with his cousin ‘dinghy captain’ Travis, age eight. Dinghy was afloat before we launched and Margaret christened our new sailboat Makaleka. In another old photo, she pours champagne on the bow. She didn’t break the bottle on the bow. We didn’t want to damage our Pearson 36-foot sloop we had finally launched into Rhode Island
Abacus
Will never forget the great Christmas Day battle between digital machine and the age-old abacus. Before Texas Instruments invented a hand-held, battery powered calculating machine, ancients invented the abacus. Internationalists should know that in 1995 an abacus was still used to double-check that newly arrived, old fashion cash register. Saw a Russian in a food store doing just that calculation. His fingers moved those beads on a wire faster than the machine. I got my
Born in Jail
Maybe the schoolyard bully boasted, “My Dad can whip your Dad.” To which our children responded, “But not our Mother. She was born in the jail.” They boasted true. Maxine was born in the jailhouse. Their Uncle Glenn was also later born in the jail. Maxine and Glenn’s mother, Ila Smith, lived on a Texas Hill Country ranch. And when time came to give birth, she came to Llano. No hospital, but her father Dan McDonald
Drive-in Movies
Drive-in movies will dare a pandemic and start opening for cars…and family passengers…in Texas this month. So the girls who went there in Abilene tell me. Daughter One remembers seeing South Pacific on the big screen. Daughter Three remembers climbing on the mattress in the rear of the station wagon after they showed cartoons, before the feature. Daughter Two ‘not much’. What Daddy remembers goes back to when the 1950 drive-in theater operator paid their
Two Doctors
This tale of two Doctors told twice. First, another epidemic at another time. Tom Scott and I were boys when the 1940s polio epidemic shut down swimming pools, summer baseball games, some movie theaters. Crippled many children. Tom’s father performed orthopedic surgery in West Virginia. But relatives in Maine —with low polio incidences —-offered to keep young Tom up north for the summer. Maine relatives lived twelve miles from where the author Doctor who created
Together Again
Four generations of the Maxine and Dick Elam family, scattered across four states, gathered Sunday to celebrate Easter. You need to Zoom, transmit and receive online, to connect Texas, Mississippi, South Carolina, and the progenitor in Indiana. The family always ends their get togethers with a song Great Grandfather learned at a training session for Boy Scout adult leaders. Back when there were three daughters, now grandmothers. Before the boy, now a grandfather, arrived.
All News is Local
Let’s start with an email from a former Chapel Hill journalism student, Kevin Bullard: Someone I know had a cousin pass from the virus Monday. I remember something you told us back in school: “All news is local.” I’ve never forgotten that, and look for local connections whenever I hear about something happening far from home. Kevin just repeated what I learned from my 1948 journalism editing professor. Dr. Granville Price taught Texas journalism students
Early Retirement
Not many belonged. Our 1970 and 1980s Chapel Hill, North Carolina church membership numbered maybe 300 souls, including some babe in arms. So small that we couldn’t afford to pay a preacher. We chose ‘do it yourself’ preaching. Good idea because the Secretary of the University faculty, Professor Henry Boren, was a foremost authority on the Roman Republic. Although he didn’t deliver a sermon but once a quarter, Henry often read scripture from a Greek-language
Off My Chest
You don’t want to hide a gift sweatshirt in your closet, but the four presents given by my ‘darling doting’ children make me consider that possibility. I’m talking about sweatshirts with two-inch-high letters emblazoned across my chest. Just like comedian Rodney Dangerfield, the words make me wish for a little more respect. The sweatshirt with white letters on orange cloth reads, “I used to teach, but now I have no class.” Other shoppers at the supermarket