Month: April 2021

Another Strange Easter Tradition at Nogglestead

Brian J. Noggle

I have already told you the story of the Easter Chewbacca (which Chimera successfully knocked behind the clock, so it resides there to this very day, and the Easter tie (which I did wear to church this morning).

Now, the story of the Easter bucket.

I got some stuff for Easter for the boys this year. Last year, Easter fell right after the lockdown, and I was still limiting my trips out of Nogglestead, so I didn’t get anything for the boys. And the gap gave me time to forget that we had discarded the old Easter baskets from years before because my boys had beat each other with them between the holidays.

So when I went out to look for the baskets in the garage last night, I only found one that had been part of another Easter disbursement of some sort.

So I used a decorative bucket instead for the oldest.

They’re old enough to buy their own candy year-round, which they do whenever they have money in their pockets and the weather allows. So they only got a couple peeps and a couple of chocolate eggs, a magazine or two each, a tin of Altoids, and a yo-yo. Most of the candy is likely eaten except for a tin of Altoids which has already been spilled.

And the Easter Bucket might just become a tradition. I mean, the oldest only has three more Easters, so it doesn’t make sense to spend a couple of dollars on one at this late date.

So another, albeit brief, strange tradition is born.

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Meanwhile, In The Powerline Week In Pictures, We Get My Area

Brian J. Noggle

This weeks Week in Pictures at Powerline features a meme from my area:

If I am not mistaken, that is Kearney facing east. North of Kearney, there’s only Interstate 44 and then non-overpass intersections north.

Of course, I hardly ever see the intersection going that way–when I’m going to ABC Books, I take US 65 north to Kearney and then turn west on Kearney to get to Glenstone and my favorite bookstore.

I have seen the sign on rare occasions when I have wanted to catch the highway from Kearney or when I have gone east on Kearney to a sports facility formerly known as The Courts, where my boys had a basketball camp and my youngest briefly played in a basketball league.

Not as weird as seeing a known intersection in a CAPTCHA.

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Brian J. Avoids The Big Mistake (Barely)

Brian J. Noggle

So my boys were both off of school on Good Friday, and since it was two weeks out from our adventures on spring break, I wanted to take them somewhere if I could think of it. I mean, we have the Springfield places that we’ve either gone often, doesn’t interest them, or is priced for tourists.

So I thought about a road trip.

I thought about going out to Poplar Bluff to have lunch with my brother or nephew, but it’s six hours round trip, and we had church service in the evening. So I looked around for used book stores or places to go that might have interesting things to do. Bolivar apparently has a used book store that is a seamstress’s sideline and a couple parks. But I saw the It’s a Mystery book store down in Berryville, Arkansas. It’s only about an hour and a half away, and it looks like Berryville has plenty of places to eat and a town square to walk around. So I piled the boys into the car with their old road trip Game Boys and, when everyone asked our destination, told them, “It’s a Mystery.” That was about the best part of it.

So they’re guessing as we start down Highway 160. Is it Branson? Is it a museum? And then the youngest, still at the private school, asks, “Is it out of the state?”

“Do you want to go out of the state?” I asked, playing coy.

“If I go to another state, I have to quarantine for two weeks from school,” he said.

Oh, yes, now I remembered that edict from the school. Of course, I hadn’t thought of it because we weren’t “traveling” in the vacation sense; we were taking a day trip on a lark. So I screeched the brakes as we approached the Welcome to Arkansas sign, barely averting the disaster of having him home for two weeks.

Well, it wasn’t quite that dramatic, but I did have to abort the mission and curse the arbitrary PANDEMIC!!!!! protocols which determined that a small town seventy miles away was more dangerous than big cities three hours away on other states’ borders.

So we ended up driving an hour and a half taking the long way around to a diner thirty minutes from our home in Marionville, which did not impress us, and then driving to run a couple of errands in town.

So I basically spent four hours in the car yesterday going nowhere.

It’s not the adventure we’d hoped for, but at least the goal and the result will have been memorable.

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Good Album Hunting, April 1, 2021: Relics Antique Mall

Brian J. Noggle

I got two $25 gift certificates to Relics Antique Mall for Christmas. Relics’ gift certificates are unique in two ways to Relics’ favor: They expire in a mere six months, and you have to spend the total amount on the gift certificate as they give no change and they’re not gift cards that can carry a balance.

I had a couple of minutes between picking up the oldest from his after school activity and picking up the youngest from his after school activity, so I stopped by to see if I could find anything. When I was in during the Christmas season, I had spotted a set of fencing equipment which I believe had two vests, two helmets, four gloves, and two foils, and I would have been all over that if I saw it again. I mistakenly thought I had two $30 gift certificates, so I thought I would almost afford the fencing set which was $75 if memory serves. But I didn’t see it. I started browsing records though, thinking if I could find $30 in records in fifteen minutes, I would spend one of the certificates, and if I only found a couple bucks’ worth of records, I’d pay.

Well, as I have lamented before, record prices have been rising. Not so fast for the old and the obscure stuff I like as much as for more popular fare, but where records would have been a couple bucks a couple years ago, now they’re five dollars and way, way up.

Still, I was playing with house money. And in about twenty minutes, I found enough to spend both certificates.

I got:

  • Torch Songs for Trumpet by Doc Severinson and His Orchestra.
  • Catching the Sun by Spyro Gyra.
  • All Access, a two record live album it looks like, by Spyro Gyra.
  • Hollywood Byrd by Charlie Byrd. A jazz musician who the people who price records for antique malls don’t seem to have heard of as both his records were on the low end of the price scale.
  • The Touch of Gold by Charlie Byrd. Of course, both records are ‘pops’ more than jazz maybe.
  • One of Those Songs by the Fluegel Knights. It looks to be a compilation; the name would seem to indicate a fluegelhorn somewhere, ainna?
  • Here’s Jody by Jody Miller. She looks very country, but she’s PWOC (Pretty Woman On Cover), and the record has a version of “Won’t You Stay (Just A Little Bit Longer)” that I want to hear.
  • Organ Moods in Hi-Fi with Buddy Cole at the Pipe Organ. C’mon, man, can you have too many organ records? I mean, I have bought Klaus Wunderlich new on CD. You know how I would answer. Plus, this record was fifty cents.
  • The Best of Tim Weisberg by Tim Weisberg. Two bucks; on the low end of the price scale, and I already have several Tim Weisberg albums. Again, I guess this is the obscure stuff I accumulate.
  • Impressions for Flute by Ransom Wilson. He looks much more serious than Tim Weisberg.
  • A Nonesuch record with works by Francis Poulenc. I have no idea who he is, but I know Nonesuch records.
  • Around the World by Frankie Carle.
  • Feels So Good by Chuck Mangione. Because it has a better cover than the other one that I recently bought at another antique mall.
  • Golden Classics by Ace Cannon.

I carefully estimated and thought I’d picked out about $65 in records (profligately). It was only when I got to the register that I re-discovered my gift certificates were for $50 total. But with the discounts applied, the total came to $53 something.

Which means that the records I got only cost me $4. Many of them came with their own mylar sleeves, which is further savings.

However, as my recent tidying of my record shelving has indicated, I really need to build more shelving. Especially with the Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library book sale coming up later this month with its fifty cent records on the Saturday. Ay, if only I had a pickup truck to easily haul lumber.

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Unclear On The Concept

Brian J. Noggle

I picked at the margins of cleaning up my garage last weekend, getting rid of a couple of bins of glass in various forms (jars, bottles, broken), and I discovered that at some point in the past, I had stored a stepping stool by putting it on the top shelf.

In my defense, I think the then-immediate impulse was to get it off of the floor, and I did. Besides, everyone who would want to get something from the top shelves in the garage these days is tall enough to reach the top shelf (my oldest is about to be taller than I am–what?) or is married to/begat someone tall enough to reach it. This particular stool doesn’t see much use at Nogglestead aside from maybe some painting duty (I’d have to check the colors of paint spattered on it to see if this is actually the case).

As it’s not actually blocking the garage door from opening, I shall keep it there, likely for years. Like so many things these days.

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Recklessly, I Picked Up….

Brian J. Noggle

So, I finished reading Supercarrier, and I then picked up Supership. When I bought it in 2007, I thought it was a novel set on a supertanker, but I have since learned it is actually a nonfiction account, sort of like Supercarrier on a tanker.

I started reading this, and the cargo ship got stuck in the Suez Canal.

So I picked up The Last Picture Show, and Larry McMurtry died.

I told my beautiful wife these two events, and although she laughed, I feared my reading selections might have more power than providing me several nights’ worth of reading leading to eventual, or sometimes sudden, disappointment.

Maybe what I decide to read dictates world events.

Keeping with my reading of novelizations or sources for movies in paperback, I picked up True Lies.

I am sorry; if that happens, it’s all on me.

Meanwhile, reading of David Copperfield continues a couple chapters every couple of nights. So far, no major mining disasters. So maybe it really is a coincidence.

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