His humor

(Lyndon 13)
One thing Lyndon loved was comedy in movies, slapstick.  He would tell about it later and laugh heartily.  He had for a friend a tall thin negro who was always falling down awkwardly or getting in funny situations, and Lyn loved to tell us about it and laugh until he nearly choked.  I think I said he should be careful of choosing his friends, but he knew better than I what he wanted to do.

On cue

(Dogs 40)
One day when I was having trouble with a dress pattern, thinking out loud to my self to clear things up:  "Here is A, the front  --  here's B and C  --  but where is D?"  I looked up and here he came trotting in!

Naming

(Dogs 18)
So started the reign of Vica.  I believe I really named her.  Queen and Princess seemed so worn.  One day, when visiting Skip in his shack, I suddenly said, "How about Victoria?  She was a queen and it could be a double entendre sort of -- you being victorious in winning us over."  "Yes!" said Skip, "yes, and Vica for a call name."

Cemetery scene

(1980 memoirs)
Of course Harry [the drummer] and I had movie dates, etc.  Sometimes after a movie we'd go to Sanford Cemetery and sit on the tombstones and talk.  He might put his arm around me and say, "Well, I see you have on your cast-iron protector tonight."  I would giggle and say, "Yes."  So then pretty soon we'd walk home!  This went one for a while, and it wasn't too many weeks before we mutually went our separate ways.  Too little in common.

Skittish

(1980 memoirs)
The Evans' daughter was Betty, and one time I impersonated her in a skit given to take off the faculty.  I recall only that I borrowed someone's coon-skin coat (like hers) and at one point asked, "My father said that?"  What I remember vividly, though, is looking at the audience and seeing the agonized faces of Betty and her parents!  Whatever makes us get into situations so disgraceful we never forget them the rest of our lives?

Plaid sox

(1980 memoirs)
A girl I knew, Marian Cole, a pretty blonde, told me about a couple of dates she had with Si Owen.  When he came to call for her, her father was in his slippers, wearing rather bright plaid sox.  As soon as she got her coat and they were in the hall, he whispered, "Where does he keep them?  Those sox?"  And ever after when he called for her he would whisper, "Where are they?"  He was so grave-looking but so funny to talk to it was fun being with him.  But he didn't go with either of us very much at all, but rather with a plain, dowdy girl, and we could never see what he saw in her.

Angel eyes

(1980 memoirs)
[In Biology class] we were seated alphabetically in the Little Theater for the lecture, and that put me next to a wise solemn senior, Si Owen, who was rather slight in build, wore dark horn-rimmed spectacles, and, belying his grave appearance, was exceedingly good company and frequentlly came out with funny and sometimes audacious things.  As soon as I sat down next to him the first day, he said, "Hello, Angel Eyes."

All in the vice

(1980 memoirs)
That [Frosh Party] is how I met Sammy Meyers, a very cute boy, I always thot.  He talked in rather a husky voice and said cute things in a confiding manner.  He smoked a short black pipe and it gave him rather an air,  you know.  He told me about when he first went home (Racine) and his father (a lawyer, I think) asked him where he got the pipe.  "I just told him, 'I acquired it,'" he said in that soft voice.

One dollar

(1980 memoirs)
One Sunday afternoon a carful of relatives from Fond du Lac, I among them, were out riding and stopped in to see Frankie.  [Skip was there too, picked up from scout camp, in 1943.]  She felt so bad because she couldn't ask us to supper, but we had no idea of stopping.  After talking a while, we all piled back into the car for home.  And here stood dear Frankie with a dollar bill pressing it on us to buy something to eat.  We were not around the corner before they were all laughing so hard tears ran down their faces.   A carfull -- probably seven or eight -- and Frankie expecting us all to have supper with the dollar bill she was pressing on us!  Whoop!  Did you ever know anything funnier?  Well -- yes.  Lots of things.  In the first place, Frankie never ate out and had no idea how far her dollar would go.  In the second place, I am sure it never entered her head to figure it out.  She was not of their world nor they of hers, thank God.

The band and the button

(1980 memoirs)
The family regarded Frankie somewhat as a curiosity.  At times I could see why.  When Aunt Lois asked her for any old skirt or petticoat she might not be using, for a black edge around her braided rug, Frankie said she would see and rummaged in her closet.  At length she found what she was after and showed it to Lois.  The skirt was approved and accepted.  Thanks were given and accepted.  Then Frankie said, "Lois, if you have no use for the band and the button, I'd like to rip that off before you take it."  My aunt's lips twitched but she controlled herself, at least until she drove off in her Ford.  They never forgot it.  If a garment were handed down forevermore, one or the other would say, "Are you sure you don't need the band and the button?"  Roars and gales of laughter!  I never thought that was so funny.  If she were making another skirt, the band and button would come in handy, and Lois didn't need it.

Muskmelon

(1980 memoirs)
One thing as a child Frankie despised above all and that was a muskmelon.  So of course her brother Henry tried to tease her about it.  He dressed one up as a doll and offered it to her.  Amazed at her good fortune and his generosity, she lifted it up in her arms to her face - when suddenly - her eyes still dilated in the telling - she caught the scent of the thing and then threw it as far as she could throw!  Of course then Henry and any others in the joke laughed their heads off.  But when I knew her [over 50 years later], she had gotten over this horror and we had them on the table.

Congo cow

(1980 memoirs)
One thing I remember with a smile is the tale of wicked Halloween tricks college boys played in Henry Clapp's day [1880s?].  I am thinking of the one where somehow boys got a cow up in the belfry of the Congregational Church, the one college vespers were held in, etc. Henry was a good story teller.  He was small boned, slight, small twinkling eyes now, and had a good command of language.  November1 when school opened there was an unfamiliar lowing, heard by all, understood by the farm boys, a cow wanting to be milked in her own familiar quarters.  Memory fails when I try to recall how "the authorities" got her down, but of course it was done and amid no tell-tale faces.

Mag

(1993 July, Rueping memoirs)
My father never looked at another woman all those years [when Minnie was sick], but at night he would go to Taychedah and have a beer and talk with pals.  There was an old man who used to say to a spinster passing the saloon on her way home, "I know ya, Mag.  With you little red petticoat.  I knew ya Mag, years ago - I knew ya."  And she would hurry past as fast as she could walk.  And the men would all laugh, of course, at the window or outside.

Art and the rabbits

(1993 July, Rueping memoir)
Art was very well behaved and quiet, but not too bright.  My father never got over a joke of his.  He told Art if he wanted to shoot some rabbits, he should come out with his gun some day as there were plenty in the snow when cottages were vacant.  So one day he drove out, parked his car, got out the gun, and said, "Well, Parsons, where are the rabbits?"  FMP told that for years and always got a laugh.

Here comes the lad

(1970 January)
Every morning we got up at 6:30 - breakfast at 7 - a tense time wondering if the paper boy would come with the paper in time to be read at the table.  Sometimes Lorin would be oh-so-quaint and say, "Ah, here comes the lad."  Or I might.

Over 90

(1994 May 10)
I am often sleepy.  Does this have anything to do with being over 90?  Just refused invitation to kick a Beach Ball around.

Nursery

(1966 August 7)
[A few days before LL's operation] I went to the hospital about 2....  Well, he was tired of being in bed, and I persuaded him to take a long walk to the Nursery to look at the babies.  When we arrived at the window, not a child!  Quipped he:  And this is the population explosion they want us to build a new school for!

Probably barefoot

(1966 July 8)
In case you are wondering and you probably are not, I am wearing a beige cotton knit two-piece to the wedding [of Marthea Kay] with a blue hat, white purse, probably barefoot.

Laugh-in

(1967 September 10)
We watched a new TV show called "Laugh-in" (Saturday nite).  Try to see it - very fast jokes and good.  Those buttons were everywhere:  Thop Lithping.  Lady Godiva wears jockey shorts.  Down with mini skirts.  Goliath was stoned.

Animal crackers

(1993 December late)
Believe it or not, I have just eaten a whale fish, and before that a graham hippopotomus.  How could I resist with the box open on the coffee table before me?  --  Sherry, [at Christmas] when we sat around half starved waiting for the call to supper, Skip would say, "Sherry's present!" and each of us would devour an entire wild animal with no trouble at all.