From the archives (May 18, 2021): Nostalgia ain't all it's cracked up to be

From 1965 until 1975, a sitcom called Till Death Us Do Part ran on British television. Its success inspired similar shows in several other countries, including All in the Family in the United States from 1971 to 1979. All in the Family starred Carroll O'Connor and Jean Stapleton in the roles of Archie Bunker and Edith Bunker, respectively, and every episode began with the two of them sitting at their piano, singing this song:

Boy, the way Glenn Miller played
Songs that made The Hit Parade,
Guys like us, we had it made,
Those were the days!

And you knew where you were then,
Girls were girls and men were men.
Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again.

Didn't need no welfare state,
Everybody pulled his wei.ght.
Gee, our old LaSalle ran great,
Those were the days!

It has now been more than 50 years since Archie and Edith began singing that song. The wonderful days they longed for and missed so much included the years of the Stock Market Crash, the Great Depression, and World War II.

The days many people today seem to long for include the Korean Conflict, the VietNam War, the urban riots during the Civil Rights movement, the AIDS scare. One can almost envision a few years down the road that millennials will be looking back with fondness on good old days like September 11, 2001.

Time plays tricks on people. Many human beings seem to remember only the good and forget the bad, while others do just the opposite, emphasizing the bad and ignoring the good. It is my opinion that both groups are unrealistic in their approaches to living. I will leave it to others to help both groups work out their mental health problems.

I, of course, have the answer. For a dose of real nostalgia, the good kind, let us return to the days of yesteryear (that's a phrase from The Lone Ranger radio program if you didn't know) and go back to the school playground, as we did in this post from 2014, which you should now read, including the comments, before continuing..

Now that I think about it, grade-school recess wasn't always such fun either. I distinctly remember Sidney Usleton sneaking up on me every day during recess in the second grade and choking me from behind. This lasted until I mentioned it at home, at which time my Dad showed me a little jujitsu move he had learned in the Navy that sent Sidney Usleton packing. He never bothered me again. I think our teacher, Miss Elizabeh Nash (younger sister of Miss Erma, the principal) was oblivious to the whole situation.

Do you have good memories or bad memories from grade school?

A, B, C, D, and so on

A. Here are some songs whose titles mention a house, part of a house, or objects found in a house:

How Much Is That Doggie In The Window?
Open The Door, Richard
House Of The Rising Sun
This Old House
Bless This House
Come On-A My House
Old Rocking Chair's Got Me
Get Up, Get Up, Get Up, Get Up, Get Up, Get Out Of That ..... Bed
Dancing On The Ceiling
Deck The Halls With Boughs Of Holly
Someone's In The Kitchen With Dinah
Stairway To The Stars
My Grandfather's Clock
Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor On The Bedpost ..... Overnight?

B. Here are some songs whose titles mention fruits and vegetables:

Don't Sit Under The Apple Tree With Anyone Else But Me Yes, We Have No Bananas
Cherry Pink And Apple Blossom White
Life Is Just A Bowl Of Cherries
Shoo Fly Pie And Apple Pan Dowdy
I Heard It Through The Grapevine
Lemon Tree Very Pretty
Strawberry Fields Forever
I Found My Thrill On Blueberry Hill
Orange Colored Sky

C. No composers or lyricists were harmed during the compilation of the two lists above.

D. Setting aside the fact that all the songs in B above mention fruits and not a single one mentions vegetables, I wonder if you noticed what I noticed about every single item in both lists above, namely that every single song mentioned in A and B above is an OLD song, VERY OLD. I suppose, no, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt. that the reason for this phenomenon is that I also am OLD, VERY OLD.

E. You don't have to agree so readily.

F. Your assignment, should you choose to accept it (remember Mission Impossible?) is to come up with more recent entries for both categories.

G. Changing directions, I tend to pay attention to detail (one has to when one writes computer programs) and don't like inaccurate statements in the media. Here's one that has been bothering me lately:

In a television commercial soliciting donations to a charity that provides food to the elderly in Israel, the voice-over man said, "Scripture says that joy can come in the morning" and then tried to guilt viewers into responding. Ethics aside, I just want to point out that Scripture does not say joy "can come" in the morning. Verse 5 of Psalm 30 says "weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning." Not can come. Comes. There's a difference.

Until next time, I remain
Your intrepid online pointer-outer,
rhymeswothplague

Maybe the more it changes, the more it doesn’t stay the same

Although the New Testament was written originally in Greek, it is not the scholarly classical Greek of antiquity but Koine Greek, the language of ordinary people in the street. Furthermore, the first major translation of the Bible into Latin is called the Vulgate because it used the language of common people. (The word vulgus in Latin simply meant common, long before our English word 'vulgar' took on its modern meaning.)

Having said all of that, I have noticed that much of the gospel music enjoyed by the American wing of the evangelical Protestant world (of which I am a part) likewise employs something less than the King's English. Here are some examples:

"Can't nobody do me like Jesus"
"Ain't no grave gonna hold my body down"
"Ain't no power on earth can tie me down"
"I wouldn't take nothin' for my journey now, gonna make it to Heaven somehow"
"If it wasn't for the lighthouse, where would this ship be?"
"Gonna lay down my burden down by the riverside, ain't gonna study war no more"
"I've got a mansion just over the hilltop"

But would using grammatically correct language result in an improvement?

"Nobody can treat me like Jesus"
"There isn't any grave that can hold my body down"
"There isn't any power on earth that can tie me down"
"I wouldn't take anything for my journey now, I'm going to make it to Heaven somehow"
"If it weren't for the lighthouse, where would this ship be?"
"I'm going to lay down my burden down by the riverside, I'm not going to study war any more"
"I have a mansion just over the hilltop"

In a word, no.

In fact, to many Christians who are familiar with the original wordings (among whom I include myself), the rewritten versions sound stilted and artifical, even pedantic.

With the possible exception of the one that mentions a lighthouse.

Plus the fact that double negatives like 'ain't no' and 'can't nobody' actually make a positive that says the very opposite of what one intended.

I guess you can't teach an old dog new tricks.

But those writers of the New Testament were onto something.

Pedantically yours,
rhymeswithplague

They say things happen in threes

...but in the past few days four prominent celebrities from the world of entertainment have died:

• Ozzy Osbourne, British heavy-metal rocker, 76.
• Malcolm-Jamal-Warner, American actor (can you say Theo Huxtable?), musician, and poet, 54.
• Hulk Hogan, professional wrestler, 71.
• Chuck Mangione, jazz trumpeter, 84.

The causes of their deaths were said to be Parkinson's disease (Osbourne), drowning (Warner), cardiac arrest (Hogan), and natural causes in his sleep (Mangione).

I'm sure Mr. Mangione's 'natural causes' included a cardiac arrest similar to Mr. Hogan's. The only difference seems to have been that one was awake and one was asleep when his heart stopped beating.

I don't mean to be macabre but I found the reportage interesting.

At my age I find everything interesting.

Tomorrow is Mrs. RWP's 90th birthday and the celebrating has already begun. A neighbor threw a surprise party yesterday that included two bouquets of a dozen roses, a gift certificate to a restaurant, home-made pizza, and a rasberry white chocolate mousse cake from the best bakery in the county. On Wednesday another friend took us to lunch at our favorite Chinese restaurant. Tomorrow our immediate family members are coming over to celebrate and cook for us too, but they decided not to surprise us.

I'm glad. We wouldn't want their showing up at our door unannounced to trigger a cardia arrest.

There I go being macabre again.

A thousand pardons. I'll take your shocked looks under advisement for composing future posts.

Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité!

Happy Bastille Day!

Look it up.

After not having seen Jeopardy! at all in several months (can you say 'cold turkey'?), I watched an episode on Friday and knew three answers none of the contestants knew, namely:

What is Bewitched?
What is Bonanza?
What is (are?) the New York Mets?

The three contestants were all Gen Z'ers, and host Ken Jennings said they made him feel old.

Me too.

Of course, I am old, but that is beside the point.

Or maybe that is the point. At least I know what Bastille Day is.

Seacrest out.

It drives me crazy

...when place names are mispronounced by news readers on television.

For example, yesterday the small town of Alvarado, Texas, was in the news. This town is very close to Mansfield, Texas, where I was raised or reared or grew up or however you think I should say it. Amost everyone who mentioned the town on television news broadcasts mispronounced it. For the record, even though in Spanish Alvarado rhymes with bravado, and even though the town was named after Alvarado in the Mexican state of Veracruz, the correct pronunciation of the town in Texas rhymes with Play-Doh or Day-Glo or Laredo, take your pick. All day long on the news channel the people were saying 'al-vuh-RAH-doh' until 4 p.m., when Will Cain, a man who actually is from Texas and broadcasts from Texas, said 'al-vuh-RAY-do' and I felt vindicated. At 7 p.m. I heard Laura Ingraham say it correctly too, but everyone else was back to 'al-vuh-RAH-do'.

I have friends from California who become agitated when people say Paso Robles wrong. Robles does not rhyme with 'go blaze' but with the English word 'nobles'.

I guess it depends on whether you aim for Spanish purism or go with the flow of the local populace.

There is Spanish and then there is Spanish.

In Texas, the San Jacinto monument near Houston is pronounced 'san juh-SIN-toh' or even 'san juh-SIN-tuh'. But actress Betty White, who lived in California, referred to it once as 'san hah-CHEEN-to', which I guess is technically correct but made Texans everywhere roll their eyes.

I have the strange feeling we have discussed these things before, but I may be mistaken.

Waxahachie (another town in Texas) is not WACKS-uh-hatch-ee, it's WALKS-uh-hatch-ee.

The G in Nacogdoches is not pronounced. And the word sounds nothing like the town of Natchitoches a few miles away in Louisiana even though they are named for the same Native American tribe (I think). In Texas it's 'nack-uh-DOH-chiz' and in Louisiana it's 'NACK-uh-tish'. I'm not even kidding.

The Brazos River in Texas is 'BRAZZ-us', not 'BRAH-zose'.

People in Illinois do not pronounce the S in the name of their state but a lot of other people do.

In Florida, Boca Raton is not 'boh-ka ruh-TAHN', it's 'boh-ka ruh-TONE'. Trust me, I lived there for six years.

Don't even get me started on Mackinac Island, Michigan, or Sault Ste. Marie (also in Michigan), or Dahlonega, Georgia, or Poughkeepsie, New York, or Puyallup, Washington.

In North Carolina, the town of Beaufort is 'BOH-fort' but the South Carolina town of the same name is 'BEW-fert'.

Call me anything you like (and I've been called a lot of things), just don't call me late for dinner.

What place-name mispronunciations get your knickers in a twist dander up?

It's funny (funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha)

...how some facts stick in the brain and others don't. Take addresses, for example. I know that my aunt lived at 405 West Avenue in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, before moving to 403 Linden St. and I know that her telephone number was TUrner 6-9280 before there was ever such a thing as an area code. She has been dead since 1987.

My grandfather lived at 321 Runnymede Avenue in Jenkintown for many years before moving to my uncle's house at 325 West Avenue, a block from my aunt. My grandfather died in 1970 and my uncle died in 1983.

I remember that after Mama, Daddy, and I moved from 61 Larch St. in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, to Fort Worth, Texas, on a train (it took three days) in August 1947, when I was six, we stayed for a few days at the Majestic Hotel, then rented some rooms in the Arlington Heights section of the city, and eventually rented a whole house at 2332 Chandler Drive East. Had we stayed there, I would have eventually graduated from Paschal High School, but we didn't stay there. A few months later my parents bought an old house on three acres of land outside of Mansfield, Texas (population 774). Our address was Route 1, Box 59. A few years later, without ever having moved an inch, the countyside around Mansfield had grown so much that our address was changed to Route 1, Box 92.

Our first telephone in Mansfield was mounted on the wall and did not have a dial. It was equipped with a hand-operated crank on the side to ring the operator, who completed the connection through, I suppose, a switchboard. Our number was 157J-3. The -3 meant that because we were on a "party line" of at least eight families the indication of an incoming call to our house was three short rings. That operator really earned her money. The telephone company eventually replaced the crankbox on the wall with a phone that sat on the desk; it had a handset we picked up to talk through and listen with but it didn't have a dial. The operator came on the line when a person lifted the handset from its cradle and would complete the connection. Eventually we got still another telephone with both a handset AND a rotary dial. Our telephone number was not nearly as long as my aunt's TUrner 6-9280, no sir, it was short and sweet, 4726. As fans of Hee-Haw will remember, that is an even shorter phone number than Junior Samples had (BR549).

Nowadays we enter numbers into our smartphone's directory and just press the name of the person we want to reach. Or we can simply say, "Siri, call Grandma." As a result, I don't know anyone's telephone number any more.

We've come a long way, baby.

I think.

In the U.S., people say "Hello?" but in the U.K. they say "Are you there?" (or used to). Someone I know used to say "It's your nickel, start talking" and someone else said simply "Speak." It takes all kinds.

I will now close this fascinating post (I can hear you yawning) by telling you the first words spoken into a telephone mouthpiece, according to what I read. In a demonstration to others of his new invention, Alexander Graham Bell said to his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, who was in another room, "Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you." It happened in Boston, Massachusetts, on March 10, 1876.