The Ted Heath Orchestra.

Strange, you know. He saw all the big bands in college. At Cornell, he danced to Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, the Dorsey Brothers, Count Basie, and Duke Ellington. Played them all his life.

But when he had a wife and kids, he had business trips to Europe and he saw the final gasp of the big bands. Here’s a song he couldn’t stop playing (I’m not sure it’s the right cut because what I remember had more piano…)

I think it was the song itself, the desire to be closer to my mother while he was overseas. The Nearness of You.

Searched for it a long time since my parents died. This doesn’t mean I’ve found it. The version I remember had a Chopin captivating quality to it. This one doesn’t. We still need the piano.

And, yeah, their wedding anniversary would be on the 20th. 1946 to 2015 is a hell of a jump. But they died before they could make it..

Happy Anniversary, mother and dad.

I keep remembering our time here.

Zachary Ryan Angel. This is his FB picture.

He’s good at lecturing, sanctimony, not reading or understanding what you wrote, not taking your links while claiming you cite no precedent arguments, and other millennial talents. You can find him beating me up at The Jennifer Rubin Facebook page.

Cool. I guessed him as Georgetown ’12. You’re free to offer up your own guesses.

…I don’t have a six pack. I have a one-pack. And I meant it.

So she said, “Then what’s that in the refrigerator?”

Whatever happened to all those unused Tab cans?

No one would dare make this movie today.

Enough triggers and micro-aggressions to make the average sophomore who identifies as female to wet herself with fury.

It involves a patriarchal disease called humor which is mostly unknown to those who identify as female these days. It makes fun of college in every possible way. It laughs itself sick at the whole idea of college.

This is 1 of 9 available clips from the movie Horsefeathers. If you can still count, you can find the rest. (Note to rising leftist comedians: the Marx Brothers achieved genius because they were not allowed to use foul language, which privately they liked as much as you do.)

No, they couldn’t keep the Temple fans off the field at the Link.

The Link, home of the Philadelphia Eagles, was sold out for today’s game between the Penn State Nittany Lions and the Temple Owls. We had been to a previous Lions-Owls game at the Link, and that’s when we turned against Penn State. Their fans in jerseys and caps shouted racial epithets at Temple. And they were starting fights in the parking lots. We were disgusted. This was before the big Penn State meltdown that incinerated the reputation of Joe Paterno.

They’ve played this game for 40 years. Temple has lost every single game. So this year, I told my wife I wanted to try something different.

I’m not claiming it made a difference. It’s just a measure of how much this game meant to us. I asked her to join hands and pray with me for a Temple victory. “Dear Heavenly Father,” I said, and other stuff, which may have ended with “beat the hell out of Penn State.” For the record, I’ve never prayed for an outcome in a sporting event in my life. Until today.

After the first quarter, me of little faith was ready to throw in the towel, but the Missus kept tabs on the game, which seemed frankly endless, and after the early 10-3 lead, Penn State simply could not move the ball against Temple.

We watched the last quarter, prepared to bail if my well known jinx effect kicked in. No need. The Owls were dominant, triumphant, in charge. The final score was 27-10, but it wasn’t that close. The Penn State quarterback was sacked 10 times. Temple, as requested, beat the hell out of Penn State.

Hackenburg is supposed to be some kind of a Heisman candidate. Not today. Looked like all of his plans had been hacked by a higher power. Just saying.

This was the 9th sack. The 10th occurred on the next play, which ended the game.

Hail Temple.

He haunts. Like he’s in some old time castle in Scotland. How else does he understand conversational English? [calm down dear! says the wife. He’s never written a poem.]

So what we do is de-engineer the emotions. I see Raebert in the doorway. I love him and fear him. What you do with forces of nature. But he’s also seeing a doorway. Where his mommy is. And she is, as I can confirm, a goddess.

God save us all.

Shhhh, everybody. If we’re all very quiet, Jennifer Rubin’s lackey may come back and accept the challenge.

Challenged some guy earlier today to take a 10 minute quiz and show why he’s smart enough to call all conservatives morons. It took me about ten minutes to compile the quiz, so I think it’s fair. But I’m going to open it up to everybody.

Conservatives AND Liberals. We’ll keep score. Timing is critical. There are enough questions that you can’t beat it with Google. So here’s what we’ll do. Text me at 609-405-1119 and I’ll text you the quiz. Identify yourself up front as right or left. From the moment my device says “sent,” you have ten minutes to return the answers.

I will faithfully report on the results.

Do leopards change their spots? Not often. We just forget what their spots mean.

This is a no frills series of excerpts from my old “Year 2000 Who’s Who in Ameria.” But it’s still a solid introduction to the leopards who have or have not changed their spots. To save you time wondering, the organization is alphabetical.

*************************************************

Joe Biting. The most sanctimonious member of the U.S. Senate°, Biting represents the most insignificant state in the union, Dullaware, but achieved national prominence via his tour de force performances as a character° assassin in the Senate trials of Supreme Court° nominees Robert Boink and Clarence Remus. Colleagues marvel at the dizzying level of condescension Biting consistently attains in his political° and personal° discourse, despite being afflicted with the first and worst hair transplant in the U.S. Senate. It is reported by female senate staffers that he can sneer even in his sleep, which is still filled with dreams of a Biting Presdency, though that opportunity disappeared in reality some years ago during a brief campaign which foundered on the disclosure that he had been a devout plagiarist during his academic career. Rumor has it that Bill Broadley’s decision to resign from the Senate was prompted by his inability to wrest the championship from Biting in the chamber’s annual Delusions of Grandeur Tournament.

Paul Boogaloo. The smilingest liar° in the Presdent’s public relations defense team during the Lewiski Scandal°, Boogaloo became justifiably renowned for his uncanny—almost inhuman—ability to beam like a happy child while uttering the most despicable untruths, slanders, misrepresentations, and cheap shots against any and every Republian° who dared to question the Presdent’s integrity° and fitness for office. After the scandal had been overcome, Boogaloo resigned to become a champion for the liberal° cause on the cable TV show Equality Time, where he rebuts the evil° positions of his co-host Oliver Nuke with meticulously reasoned untruths, slanders, misrepresentations, cheap shots, and—of course—his legendary fixed smile.

Al Bore. Candidate for Presdent of the United States in the 2000 election. Born in Tennessucky as the heir of a famous political° family° made rich by tobacco°, Bore delivered his first speech against the evils of tobacco while still in the womb°, wrote his first opera at the age of three, cleaned up the Love Story Canal when he was seven, invented the UnderNet° on his tenth birthday, and campaigned vigorously in support of Row V. Wade° ten years before the Supreme Court° made its famous decision. His career as a multi-faceted child prodigy culminated at Harvurd University, where he served as the model for the character of Mark Anthony in one of William Shakespear’s plays about history° (“I come not to bury Ceasar but to praise him…”). After graduation he became an army photographer and won the war in Veetnam, for which he was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize. Upon returning to Ameria, he visited the family home in Tennessucky for the first time and—determined never to return—decided on a career in Wishington, DC, where he served as a Congressman and Senator from Tennessucky, and then as Vice Presdent of the United States under Bill Clitton. As famous for his character° and honesty° as for his fantastic accomplishments, Bore felt a deep revulsion and horror about the personal° misdeeds of the Presdent, and it was only through the exercise of extraordinary professional discipline that he was able to publicly profess his loyalty° to the “greatest Presdent in U.S. history” on the day of the empeachment°. Fortunately, his subsequent campaign for the Democratic° presdential nomination has afforded him the opportunity to resolve any doubts about his own integrity°—for example, he was able to resist the temptation to use Clittonesque tactics (i.e., lies, misrepresentations, and racially provocative innuendoes°) against his opponent Bill Broadley right up to the very moment polls° demonstrated that he was behind in New Hamshire. While critics carp about his wooden personality° and unprincipled° political° conduct, the overwhelming majority of the watchdogs of the press have tacitly approved him as a praiseworthy and appropriate heir to the mantle of Bill Clitton. He is married to a woman named Flipper (the model for Shakespear’s Kleopatra) who used to be upset about gangster rap° lyrics until her husband° taught her about the Afrian-Amerian° vote. (See “Loving Ameria,” Moon Books, Shuteye Town 1999.)

Sid Bummenthal. One of the Presdent’s jackals. Or is he a hyena instead? Let the historians° decide.

James Carvall. A longtime political consultant and member of the Presdent’s public relations defense team during the Clitton Lewiski scandal°, Carvall represents one of the great rags to riches stories in Amerian politics°. He was born in one of the third-wurld southern states (Bama? Missippi? Lousiana?) as the product of a mixed marriage—his father a collateral descendant of the renowned Snopes clan and his mother a six-foot Eastern Diamondback. Having inherited his father’s eternal thirst for vengeance and his mother’s venom, Carvall naturally aspired to a career in politics but discovered early—thanks to his genius for interpreting polls°—that southern voters still retained a prejudice against subhuman candidates. He therefore determined to become the premier political campaign consultant in the nation by electing to the Presdency the most miserable excuse for a human being he could find. His dream was achieved in 1992, and again in 1996, but was threatened with repeal by a vast right wing conspiracy° in 1998. In defending his life’s greatest work, Carvall achieved new heights in Amerian politics, innovating on the fly a strategy of attack defense that brilliantly combined repellent rhetoric, lies, smears, threats, leaks, and monomaniacally focused ad-hominem tirades into a formula for political triumph. Future generations will no doubt look back with awe and gratitude to the man who pioneered a new age in Amerian political discourse.

Lanny Divots. The most earnest and polished member of the Presdent’s Public Relations Defense Team, Divots was also the most alarming because no matter how inane his talking points° were, he always managed to sound so darn reasonable and sincere. If she has a brain in her head, his wife° should divorce him now, before he gets involved in any funny business, because when it comes to telling lies about sex°, Lanny Divots is the best of the best.

Jane Doe. The slut° who made all the nasty allegations about Clitton. Actually, that should be sluts (plural) because there seem to be four or five or twenty of them, but they might as well be the same one because you know how that kind are. They wish they could get hit on by a famous politician° and get groped or raped or treated like dirt somehow so they can peddle their story to the mass media°, get their reputations ruined forever icn about eighteen hours, have mysterious men show up to kill their dog and slash their tires, then flee the country or have a nervous breakdown or something, and maybe cap it all off with a tearful TV interview on MinuteLine, plastic surgery, or a great big bottle of sleeping pills. But why couldn’t they have tried the surgery or the sleeping pills before they went nuts and made up all those damaging lies about the presdent? Yes, it’s okay to lie about sex° but if they knew anything about Clitton (which they obviously don‘t), they’d know that it’s only okay to lie about sex you really have had, not about sex you didn’t have, even if the kind of sex you didn’t have isn’t what everybody, or even the Presdent, would call sex. Even assuming the act you’re referring to is sexual only in the loosest (i.e., right wing) sense of the term, it’s still not permissible (i.e., okay, or right under the circumstances, or heroic in the context of Republian° hypocrisy°, etc) to lie unless you really did engage in the sexual-type act being described. In other words, the rule is confined very strictly to flat denials of acts that occurred and it specifically excludes making things up. It’s all quite simple—why can’t these bimbos° understand it? Why?

Howard Findmore. See Michael Iznotizhe.

Linseed Graham.One of the Presdent’s persecutors in the House° of Representatives, Graham is a congressman from South Carelina and one of the leading hypocrites° in the Republian° Party°. It’s also possible that he has sex°, if you want to interrogate him about it, because he’s been romantically linked to Laurel Ingraham, who’s as loud and abrasive as Linseed is soft-spoken and smarmy.

Matt Grudge. A prime mover in the right wing conspiracy° to empeach Clitton, Grudge broke the news on his website that Newsprint, a major weekly news magazine, was researching a story about Clitton’s affair with a White House intern. Publications and television networks belonging to the legitimate news establishment expressed outrage that some little creep on the UnderNet° would leak such a slimy story to the whole country, then raced to get out their own versions of the Lewiski scandal° with as many lurid details as possible. Grudge briefly joined a legitimate network news organization himself but left hurriedly when one of the network’s executives found out he was there. If Hillery ever discovers where he’s hiding in the UnderNet, she’ll kill him. Or have one of her campaign slaves do it. Either way, he’s not what the intellectuals° have in mind when they profess to be in favor of free speech.

Orange Hatch. The Republian° Senator who wears the tab collars and hails from Utall or some other weird state out west. He’s a Mormot, too, whatever that is. For a week or so, he was also a candidate for Presdent of the United States in the 2000 election. But he kept getting a zero in the polls°, which is amazing because nobody gets a zero in the polls—there are always a few people who confuse you with someone they know or like the sound of your name or something. Unless your name is Orange Hatch. Of course, Hatch didn’t help himself much in the debates, because since when do Republians want a candidate who keeps telling them that he’s an ordinary, average Amerian just like them and knows what it’s like to be one of the little people, just like them. They don’t want that. It’s the Democratics° who want that—the more average and ordinary the better. Maybe Hatch should change parties and lose the tab collar.

Hillery. (Formerly known as Hillery Clitton, Hillery Roddem Clitton, First Lady, and Co-Presdent) Candidate for the U.S. Senate° in the State of Newyork. Just plain Hillery, as she is now known, has spent her entire life getting ready for her current campaign. Born in 1947, Hillery arrived just too late to witness the Wurld Series in which the Newyork Yankeys defeated the Brookling Doggers four games to three. But despite a surprise pennant win by Clevelin when she was one, Hillery went on to enjoy a blissful youth as the Yankeys won the pennant fourteen out of seventeen years, a period capped by her own victory as a National Merit finalist in 1965. This amazing run by the team so close to her heart unquestionably accounts for her conservative leanings as a young adult, particularly in light of her rapid drift leftward at Whalesey College, which were the dark years in which the Yankeys faded toward the cellar and the Amerian League pennant fell into the hands of pretenders like Minnesoda, Ballmore, Bostun, and Destroit. Matters grew worse during her time at the Yail Law School, when it began to seem that the Ballmore Oreos had supplanted the Yankeys as an Amerian League dynasty. So depressed had she become as a result of the Yankey drought that the move to Newyork she’d been planning from earliest childhood was postponed in favor of a stint in Wishington, DC, where she played a role in dethroning Richard Nixxon, who had been a fan of the hated Doggers since their move to Los Analos, Californica. After Watergape°, Hillery decided to flee the close proximity of Ballmore for Arklahoma and thus agreed to marry an old classmate from Yail. Both her energy and ambition returned in the mid-1970s, however, because a rebuilt Yankey organization succeeded in winning the eastern division pennant in 1976 and repeating the feat for four of the next five years. Although the Wurld Series championship remained stubbornly elusive, Hillery was buoyed enough to get her husband° elected to the state attorney-general’s office in 1976 and to the governor’s office in 1980. But another cruel Yankey dry spell disheartened her in the early 1980s, resulting in her spouse’s defeat in 1984. [More to come](See, “It Takes Me,” Moon Books, Shuteye Town 1999.)

Michael Iznotizhe. The hotshot political° journalist° in spectacles who dug through every White House trashcan looking for salacious details of the Lewiski Scandal° while soberly reporting the Hillery charge of a right wing conspiracy°, the Carvall charge of a runaway independent counsel° indulging his private° sexual fantasies at public expense, and the Divots/Boogaloo charge of a partisan° Republian° “coup” designed to repeal the vote of the Amerian people. And acting faintly superior to the whole circus at the same time. Cool°.

John Kerree. Is this maybe the Veetnam war hero senator with the short attention span? Or is it the tall craggy senator with the memory good enough to hold one talking point°? One of them is from Machusetts. Nobody knows where the other one is from. Or if you do, please let us know.

Chris Mathuse. The blond-haired jack o’ lantern who hosts the cable TV show Hardhead, Mathuse is an intellectual° pundit° and former Jimmy Carper speechwriter whose giant head contains so much knowledge about everything that he can’t stop himself from answering his own questions to his guests, thus explaining why they can never get a word in edgewise. The answer is usually that the only right opinion is the opinion of Chris Mathuse or his wife°, who also knows everything and talks as fast and nonstop as he does, which suggests the possibility that neither of them has ever heard a word the other has said. Even so, Mathuse is a devout feminist° and goes out of his way to tell all his female° guests that they have accomplished more than Hillery and that he would listen to every word they had to say if he could only stop himself from talking over the answers to the questions he asks them. But he can’t.

John McKane. Candidate for Presdent of the United States in the 2000 election. McKane started out as the son of an admiral, which probably explains why he graduated at the bottom of his class from the U.S. Navel Academy and then got shot down in his fighter plane over Veetnam. The North Veetnamese (i.e., the gooks) held him prisoner for five-and-a-half years, during which time he was beaten up every day and threatened with being sent home to explain to Dad how he got himself captured. When he finally did get back to the U.S., he decided to postpone that little talk with Dad a while longer and moved immediately to Wishington DC , where he got work as a U.S. Senator for the State of Arizonia. While other Veetnam POWs were struggling with flashbacks and personality disorders, McKane was making a name for himself in the Senate° as a Republian° Party° maverick° who never gave up on a point of principle°. When other Republian legislators were kowtowing to the tobacco lobby°, McKane defied party leaders° by organizing a hunger strike in his cellblock and vowing to cut off the head of any slant-eyed, slope-headed gook commandant who tried to tell John McKane what to do. After his reputation for principled° stands of this sort had spread throughout the Congress°, he announced his intention to escape by tunneling his way to the White House with a handmade spoon. The thought of McKane’s departure from the Senate so sorrowed his colleagues that they all gathered secretly in a room under the Capitol kitchen to build him a platform to run on. Using burned-up epaulets from old navy uniforms as writing implements, they drafted a series of policy positions guaranteed to boost the Presdential prospects of their comrade-in-arms, including wholehearted support for Clitton’s tax°-the-rich fiscal policy, a strong anti-Anti-Choice° policy, a promise to put an immediate end to Republian campaign contributions, and a clarion call for making big government work for little people. When they had completed their masterpiece, they smuggled the document into McKane’s senate office by tying it to a friendly rat named Linseed Graham, who persuaded the senator that this was his ticket to defeating George W. in the Republian primary race. Will he be able to sneak past the Senate razor-wire with a little help from his friends? Or will he get tossed in the cooler with the other hardcase mavericks? Who knows? But an old warrior like John McKane is sure to make it interesting.

Brian Millions. The prettiest network TV journalist° in Ameria and the second best-dressed, behind aging prettyboy anchor Peter Jumpings. In fact, if Millions could suck it up and climb to that next level of superciliousness, he’d be a cinch to replace Jumpings, whose producers can’t soften the focus of their cameras much more without causing viewers to phone the TV repairman.

Audrey Mitchell-Greenbacks. TV journalist° and wife° of Alan Greenbacks. It’s a strange thing—she’s married to that guy, but she still seems liberal° enough to be a nonpartisan° journalist°. Is it an act? Or is it another one of those weird new marriages° like James Carvall and Mary Magdalen. have, where they don’t wait for the divorce to start hating each other? Or maybe… hmmm. Has Greenbacks been converted to Democracy°? That might explain why nobody in the best economy in 3 billion years has more than ten dollars in ready cash…

Barbara Mudkowski. Only the second amphibian ever elected to the House of Representatives°, Mudkowski is a member of the toad family. She stoutly defended Clitton during the empeachment° fracas, arguing that our Presdent is our Presdent, warts and all.

Piggy Noone. Former speechwriter for Ronald Regan and perennial loose cannon in the Republian° Party. She is dangerously articulate and, unlike comrades-in-arms like William F. Bugley, she often uses words that people can understand. Many of her sisters in politics° regard her as a tragic case of flawed upbringing. For if she could only bring herself to start believing in good° things, instead of awful conservative° things, she might be a formidable candidate for high office one day. As it is, they’re agreed that she’s just an arrogant, self-important bitch° who needs to be taken down a peg or two.

Camera Paglia. A brilliant feminist° who has nevertheless allowed herself to become confused about the relative importance of thought and feelings°. While her feelings have properly persuaded her of the superiority of her sex, she continues—almost perversely—to engage in thought, which has caused her to discover that no one else is doing it, including the inferior sex which thought up thought in the first place. This discovery, in turn, gives rise to a feeling that there are no men° anymore, which should make her feel proud about the victory of feminism° but makes her feel disgusted, bored, and cranky instead. She has attempted to flee her quandary by becoming a celebrity°, but she would do far better to face her mistakes and correct them. All would be well with Ms. Paglia if she could bring herself to realize that a feeling which arises from thought is not a legitimate feeling of the sort prized in a democracy°, but a passion instead, which is perilously close in its intensity to anger°; i.e., the inferior male substitute for legitimate feelings. Once identified as such, her inappropriate passion can be discarded along with the confusion it inspires, and she will be able to rejoin the glad company of her sisters in promulgating the good° things they all believe in.

Clarence Remus. Member of the Supreme Court° of the United States of Ameria. Nominated by Presdent George The Elder Bush to fill the court’s Afrian-Amerian° seat (recently vacated by Thoroughgood Marshall), Remus caused a crisis in the Senate Judiciary Committee when it was discovered that he was the only Afrian-Amerian in the country who was Anti-Choice°. Faced with the imminent demise of the right to privacy°, which was then being exercised at a rate of 2 million times per year, the Democratic° majority on the committee realized the time had come for drastic non-partisan° political° action; otherwise, countless millions of lives might someday be spared. They therefore sought out an Arklahoma law professor named Anita Hole, who had once worked for Remus and was now willing to remember that he had made off-color remarks to her about pubic hairs, Coke cans, and an obscenely° over-endowed pornographic° movie star. Having dextrously leaked the story to the mass media°, the committee proceeded to hold nationally televised hearings in which Remus was portrayed as a sexual predator while prominent feminists° sat alongside TV journalists° to explain that women who made such charges had to be believed—regardless of how little evidence° they had, how long they had been silent, how much they had benefited by their association with the accused, or how friendly they had been observed to be with the accused. At the end of the hearings, Remus denounced the committee as a lynch mob, the Senate° approved his nomination, and the mass media undertook the long dreary business of subliminally persuading a skeptical Amerian public that Remus had to have been guilty of something. This hard work eventually paid off, and Remus’s reputation has now been destroyed beyond repair. Anita Hole reappears in public from time, most recently to affirm the feminist consensus that in the case of Bill Clitton, the bimbos° who were bringing forward accusations of sexual misconduct should not be given credence without hard evidence It may seem, in retrospect, a tawdry episode in Amerian politics°, but it’s important not to lose sight of the big picture. The next time a Republian° Presdent looks around for an Anti-Choice Supreme Court nominee, he may be out of office by the time he finds one. Meanwhile, individual acts of privacy can be committed at a steady million-some a year, even if the totals are no longer published. Count your blessings, one by one.

Jerraldo Riviera. The cable TV journalist° who discovered Al Capon’s vault, proved Ojay Simson’s guilt, and saved the Presdent from conviction in his empeachment° trial. He is famous for being full of integrity, or principle, or morality, or something that enables him to know, unerringly, the difference between good things and bad things, although he’s not so much of a prig° that he can’t tell lies° about sex with the best of them..

Al the Sharp One. Fat, oily, lying, anti-semitic Newyork politician°. But it’s okay. He’s Afrian-Amerian°. So we love° him.

George Steppinfetchoulos. Former Presdential Adviser and Ace Political Pundit°. (See “Lying for the Presdent,” Moon Books, Shuteye Town 1999).

Donald Trumph. A brilliant financier and real estate developer, Trumph became a one-man encyclopedia of all the 1980s ailments Presdent Clitton has been working so hard to cure. Through a combination of nerve, greed, ego, and more nerve, he managed to leverage the paltry millions left him by his old man into a vast real estate empire consisting of the Trumph Towers, the Trumph Plaza, the Trumph Castle, the Trumph Palace, the Trumph Throne of God, and then the Trumph Bankruptcy Court, the Trumph Renegotiated Loan Building, the Trumph Re-Renogotiated Loan Casino, and finally, the Trumph If-You-Take-Me-Down-I’ll-Take-You-Down-With- Me House of Cards. Through it all, he entertained the nation by marrying a bunch of wurld-class whores° and pretending he had hair. He may have slowed down some since the early 1990s, but he’s still chasing money- hungry hookers and he’s still pretending to have hair. What next? He sounds like a natural for making a new fortune on the UnderNet°, where the ability to lose money and go into debt hand-over-fist seems to be all that’s required to score a titantic equity bonanza on the NASDAQ°.

A tool I remembered.

Odd, you know. The way things get stuck in your head. I thought of this tool and nothing would make me stop.

You slide your hand down there to the hole and there it is.

There’s nothing easy about a certain kind of car in 1960.

You needed a particular kind of wrench to open the bonnet.

Which got you a look at this.

Four gleaming cylinders.

And then this:

Hood up.

Tiny really, but so many incarnations. There was top up.

It had side curtains, like a Jeep. You put them on, and scratched windows slid up.

With great effort and about 160 snaps, you could put the top down.

Put the side curtains in the barn and the top in the trunk, Leaving no room for luggage.

And the tonneau version. Dad in the car with a barely open cockpit for himself.

He looked kind of F1 in that mode.

In the winter he got a hardtop. Also cool.

You think we did all of this for a two seater? no way.

We also had a back seat. Leather. My sister and I could almost fit in it.

Capacious.

My parents had nice seats too. Also leather. We always went first class.

They could stretch their legs out. Adults need to do that.

And we all got to look at the road through the windscreen with the wind blasting our faces and the engine thrumming in our ears. We didn’t need the radio we didn’t have.

Wouldn’t trade any of it for all the child carseats in the world.

P.S. Oh. The tool up top. The bonnet key. Necessary for getting under the hood, er, bonnet. Like so.

The only way you can get in there to wash and polish the engine.

What is she singing? Try this.

Responding to a post by Ellen Ganapoulos at Greyhound Friends of New Jersey:

I’ll probably expand this into a real post later, Ellen. But what strikes me most is not cuteness but the recognition we all feel for things greyhound. We all know this stuff, have seen this stuff, love this stuff, and wait for it. Saw a serious medical article questioning whether or not sighthounds were really dogs, because they differ from the main in so many ways, physiological and biochemical. Not quite like the rest.

This is the bond that ties us all together, the privilege of being with these amazing creatures, the fastest, the slowest, the gentlest, and in some ways the most mysterious. They do comical things, but they are never without the deepest dignity. They look so much alike and yet they exhibit a dazzling array of personalities, all projected through similar pop eyes and needle noses. If there is a supermodel of the dog world, this is surely it, but they are not mean or vain or avaricious like their would-be human counterparts.

If human, they’d be picked for the jocks and cheerleaders with their big chests and slim waists and extraordinary athletic ability. Being greys instead, they carry around Winnie the Pooh, eye your sandwich, accumulate stuffed toys to cuddle, and find couches to lie on.

I’ve been impressed by the number and range of greyhound fanciers. I wish more people got rescue greys than Goldens. The greys are easier for families than the hyperactive ones. I wish more people knew that this isn’t a breed of dog but a species apart, maybe an angel. And I wish they didn’t die so young. But maybe that’s part of being an angel. You visit for a time, offer a healing of some sort, and then return to heaven.

Don’t know how to think about how that might work? We’ll have to agree to disagree. In the meantime…

Diva.