I had a breakfast-making mishap this week.  When the toast came out of the toaster, I took the lid off the butter dish on the counter and it was EMPTY!  After attempting to spread the toast with rock-hard pats of butter carved off a new stick fresh from the fridge, I decided putting the toast in the microwave for a few seconds would soften the butter.  It did, but it wasn’t good for the toast. It came out way beyond crisp.  When I tried a bite of it, I gave Bill a warning saying, “It’s really crunchy, Euell!”  He got it. I have a sneaking suspicion that most of my blog readers did, too. Not only do you remember that Grape Nuts commercial you probably remember Euell Gibbons, too.

And then a week or so ago, when something in the house came dangerously close to tipping over, I said aloud, “Tippecanoe,” to which Bill responded, “And Tyler, too.”  We’re old all right, not old enough to remember the 1840 presidential election, but we’re old enough to remember the phrase.  Our kids and grandkids?  Not do much.

How about “Hi, ho, Silver, away!”  Say that, and you’ll draw a blank because they’ve never heard of The Lone Ranger or Tonto, or Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, either, for that matter.  And that’s too bad.  Those heroes and heroines of black-and-white movies and early TV were people worth emulating. 

With Christmas decorations gradually leaking out of the garage and into the house, it’s easy to be nostalgic about what isn’t there.  Tinsel anybody?  And how about bubble lights? My folks had a couple strings of those, and I loved them.  The clips on the bottom, the ones that held the lights on the branches, tended to disappear faster than the lights wore out.

Talking about clips on bubble lights somehow made me think of clothes pins. I doubt our grandkids have ever seen a clothes line to say nothing of hanging wet laundry on one using it wooden clothes pins. How about metal stretchers to get the proper crease in a pair of jeans? And what about popping buttons off shirts by running them through a wringer washer.  And irons and ironing boards?  Nope, nope, nope.  Forget about it.

Last night someone sent us two separate Smothers’ Brothers video clips featuring duets of and comedy routines built around  Waltzing Matilda and They Call the Wind Mariah.  Their commentary made us laugh out loud.  What impressed me is that they stood on stage singing a simple duet, accompanying the lyrics with one of them playing a guitar and the other a bass fiddle.  No electronics.  No lights flashing behind them.  No clouds of artificial fog.  Just two guys singing understandable and familiar lyrics. Their live audience loved it and so did we.

So pardon me for taking you on my own personal trip down memory lane this morning.  And now that I’ve done so, I’m going to go  work on decorating the tree.  Sad to say, when I’m done, there won’t be a bubble light in sight.

And oh, if you happen to have a chance to see the movie, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, it’s worth the price of admission.  I went to see it, and since Bill can’t go to movies any more, I brought home a bag of popcorn for us to share.