Annette Bowman had a lovely birthday party at her home for Esther Geisler on Nov. 15. The house was decorated most tastefully with Christmas ornaments. Refreshments included coffee and a delicious homemade cake.
Those in attendance were her sister, Ann Williams, and Maggie Blum, Mildred Boudreaux, Dixie Roder Williams, my wife Ruth and myself. We had such a good time reminiscing. The old saying is that: “When your ears are ringing, someone is talking about you.” Well, I’ll bet everybody in Berwick had their ears ringing that day.
A get-together like that is the best medicine you can have. Everybody is laughing and talking about happenings from the past. It makes one forget about all the aches and pains you might have – almost as good as Ben-Gay.
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Most Italian men are good singers, such as Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Mario Lanza, Sam Spitale, Tony Bennett and Tony Martin. But I must have swallowed a frog when I was young; I never could sing.
However, I did make money with my voice when I owned the Doodle Bug lounge. When the music box stopped playing, I started singing as loud as I could – my customers couldn’t take it and they would all run to the music box and start dumping quarters in. Thereafter, the music never stopped and that music box paid for all my expenses.
Remember when Mrs. John Thomas sent her son, Beverly, to the store to buy a chicken? You know in those days when you bought a chicken, it was a live chicken with the feathers still on. When Beverly brought the chicken home, Mrs. Thomas boiled water, scalded the chicken and began to pluck the feathers. After she started plucking the chicken, she saw that the chicken was bruised and had small sores on it. She decided that she didn’t want the chicken and told Beverly to take it back to the store. But Beverly reneged; he was not returning the chicken. So his sister, Mildred, stood up tall and said that she would return the bad chicken.
So, she took the chicken back to Mr. Russo’s store and told him the chicken was bad and full of sores, and that she wanted another chicken or her money back. Mr. Russo said: “No, we can’t do that! Once you buy something, we can’t take it back.” Upon saying this, Mildred let loose with a real tantrum. She screamed at Mr. Russo, “If I don’t get another chicken, I’m going to turn you in to the Grocers’ Bureau.”
So, Mr. Russo gave Mildred another chicken and she took it home. She told Beverly that Mr. Russo was very nice after her tantrum and gave her another fresh chicken. At that, Beverly stood up and said in a very cool voice, “But, I didn’t buy that chicken from Russo’s, I bought it at Bella’s Grocery!”
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When you are young, you can really say that you are old at 40. When you are old you can say that you are young at 50. Anyway, when you are old, life seems so short that you wonder what happened to all the time. When you are young, it seems like you will be here forever.
* The End *