It shouldn't happen, but it does

Do we chalk this up to a stupid local custom, or to national stupidity? You probably saw this on the news - a high school teacher and golf coach in Georgia, Jason Hughes, was killed when a stupid juvenile prank went horribly wrong. 

It's prom season down there, and the local custom in Gainesville GA is for kids to "roll" the houses of teachers and what-have-you, which means covering the dwellings in hundreds of sheets of two-ply Charmin.

Mr Hughes, 40, was said to be excited about the prank, and was skulking around in his own yard hoping to "catch" the kids in the act, according to his widowed wife.

It was raining last Friday the 6th when the kids did their prank, and Hughes came running toward them, and slipped on the wet road, and got run over by a pickup truck driven by Jayden Ryan Wallace, 18, according to local sheriff’s office.

The story is that the students got out of their vehicles and tried to help Hughes until medics arrived, but you know how that went.

The New York TIMES reports that Mrs Laura Hughes is also a teacher at the same school, North Hall High, and she says her husband and the students all loved each other.

 

Aware of the annual tradition, Hughes was approaching them, not to be confrontational, but to be part of the fun with them.

Mrs Hughes says the family supports dropping the charges against all the kids,

These are the charges:  Wallace is up on a felony charge of homicide by vehicle in the first degree, as well as charges of criminal trespass, reckless driving and littering. Four other individuals involved in the prank face charges of criminal trespass and littering.   

The school district put out a warning about prom season pranks just days before the incident:

“While we understand that prom is a time for celebration and creating lasting memories, we must emphasize the importance of responsible behavior and respect for others and their property. In previous years, some pranks during prom season–sometimes referred to as Junior/Senior Wars– have gone too far, resulting in damage to property.”

I don't even know how to think about this. Of course, you can already hear people saying, "Never in anyone's wildest DREAMS did the thought occur that someone would be injured, let alone KILLED, by a seemingly innocuous bit of fol-de-rol..."

Any time you have moving vehicles and six people running around them, plus wet streets, you run a horrible risk.

I'm not trying to be Mr Buzzkill. I'm trying to be Mr Find A Better Buzz.

Great moments

And so, we add another name to the "99 Club," for those who fall a year or so short of living to 100 years of age.

But this man deserves all the glory and honor, for he was Alexander Butterfield, a former Nixon White House aide, who passed away in his California home yesterday morning. During his time working in that disgraced administration, Butterfield was involved with the installation of a covert voice-recording system that recorded the voices of the president and All His Men.  “Everything was taped … as long as the president was in attendance,” Butterfield testified on July 16, 1973, at a hearing of the Senate Watergate Committee panel, led by Sen. Fred Thompson, a Tennessee GOP lawmaker and chief minority counsel to the Watergate committee. 

TV viewers will remember Fred for playing District Attorney Arthur Branch on "Law & Order," where he chewed scenery for five seasons, attempting to be a down-home country lawyer running the prosecutions in Manhattan. Bad fit.

I was watching the Watergate Hearings myself that day, and when Butterfield bravely broke ranks and told the truth, I leaned my head toward the window in the direction of Washington, D.C. because I was sure I heard the sound of lawyers running and subpoenas being typed. All the Nixon chicanery, dirty tricks and lies, so long suspected and rumored, were actually recorded! 

55 weeks later, his last pitiful defenses shattered, Nixon stepped down into ignominy, and the courage of Mr Butterfield largely made that possible. 

When they finally dug out the tapes, I'm sure there was one with Nixon going, "Butterfield said what????"

He didn't give a hoot

There's an antique store in Durham, upstate New York, where one can really find anything on earth. As so it was that recently, a shopper looked over a cookie jar in the form of a chicken and saw a real live owl next to it.

No word on whether the owl was full of cookies or not, though.

The little town of Durham is 127 miles north of Manhattan, in case you want to shop up there. 

Customers, apparently used to seeing nature on display, told the front counter that something "extremely lifelike" was on the novelty shelf.

And when the environmental conservation police officers got to the store, they found a brown-and-white owl perched on a shelf with its eyes firmly shut.

And the officers took the sleepy owl out of the store and into a woods, where it flew into a tree, with a heck of a great story to tell his friends and family.

Eastern screech owls are nocturnal and spend most of their time nesting in tree cavities, when they're not out shopping for a gift for their moms.

Sunday rerun (from 2021): Get up!

Here we sit in 2021, with all the latest inventions and conveniences, living like I don't know what.

But I'll bet that at least half of us awoke this morning because an alarm pierced our ears as we tried to sleep a little more...a phone, a watch, a clock radio, whatever. My clock radio sounds off at 0505; if not, the cats would pile in at 0506 demanding food, water, and attention, all of which I am glad to offer.

But what if we were back in the olden days, without alarms and clock radios, and I wanted to get up before the rooster woke up and starting his caterwauling?

I would engage the services of a knocker-upper. How about that? More about that in a minute...

Even longer ago, there were candle clocks, invented in China. The deal was, candles were filled with nails down toward the bottom, and allowed to burn all night. At a certain point, the wax would melt all the way, allowing a cascade of nails to make a hellish noise on a metal tray below it. Nice way to wake up, but it must have been tough to set the candle clock to disturb you at some specific time.

And of course, on The Simpsons episode "Miracle on Evergreen Terrace" (season 9, episode 10) we see Bart drink 10 glasses of water at bedtime on Christmas Eve so he can get up early the next day to tear into his presents. It's always about the Simpsons for me.

Lisa tells Bart, "You didn't invent that, Bart. The Indians used to drink water to wake up early for their attacks."

To which Bart replies, "It's always about the Indians, isn't it, Lise?"

I hate to tell Bart this, but when you are of Social Security age, ten glasses of water won't let you sleep for more than 45 minutes, trust me.

As society grew, factory whistles and church bells woke some people, whether they wanted to get up or not.  And those knocker-uppers...

Wake-up girl Mary Smith, 1930, London

Bob Cratchit had to get up early to get to the office before Mr Scrooge, so he could put one lump of coal on the fire. People in London, people known as "knocker-uppers" went door to door with a list of what time people wanted to get up. With a long stick in their hand, or a pea shooter for those whose rooms were on the ground floor, they went around doing their duty, getting Scrooge and Cratchit alike out of bed and off to the office.

What history does not tell us is, who woke up the knocker-uppers? Just like how the snow plow driver gets to work in a blizzard, there are things we are not meant to know.

The Saturday Picture Show, March 7, 2026

 

Now it's the restroom, requesting a review. It's a wonder it doesn't ask for a tip!

A great "gift for him" for any occasion - a wallet that makes his license photo look like Batman!

Here is a one-horsepower Mustang!

Amish Country in the spring is a ride worth taking!

This can be your free wallpaper for the week and also the name of your alternative-country band: Turkeys In The Fog.

You won't see this in the Army recruiting commercials. Here's your breakfast, Eisenhower. 

The Halloween pennant dragonfly (Celithemis eponina) pays homage to the wonderful Alysa Liu.

The new home of the Philadelphia Kansas City Oakland  Las Vegas A's baseball team is taking shape in the desert. No rush, fellas. They'll just play in Sacramento for now. But hurry up before they move again!

This happened to me at work one day as well as to this person: I looked down at my feet and saw one Nike and one New Balance. I spent the rest of the day trying to hide my stompers. But I was able to remark that I had "another pair at home just like these!"

This crash victim grew tired of explaining his scars, so he added pictures.

Crazy at the store

Sometimes I feel like the steel ball in a pinball game, just careering from one odd thing to the next. 

Do you ever feel like some massive series of pranks is afoot? Do you wonder why does it always happen to you?

You tell me. I was in the grocery store - no names, please, but it rhymes with cries and tries - just for a couple of things (tea bags and brownie mix, to be exact.) When I got to the checkout area, there was a bit of a line at the one (ONE!) register with a live employee on duty, so I broke one of my cardinal rules and went to a self-checkout. Never again, grrrr.

Ahead of me was a young mom with a few items and her two little girls. Each of the girls had one of those little "shopper in training" miniature carts. Cute and cuter, I thought to myself, and waited for them to finish. Since the mom had to wrangle her purchases into a bag and then get the girls lined up to push their wee carts to the exit, this took a little time, of which I have nothing but, right?

Along comes the trail boss - an officious young woman who works for the store and wanted to break up the eddying mob around the checkout. "You can step up here to #6," she looked at me and commanded.

"All right. I'm just waiting for these ladies, no problem."

"Well, did you say, 'excuse me'?" she snarled.

I have to admit. I've been taken out to dinner, taken for a ride and taken for a fool, but it is rare that I am taken aback. I was yesterday, though. In fact, I was so surprised that I said, "Did you really ask me if I said 'excuse me' to these ladies?" and she said, "We got to keep these lines moving."

I guess the total time it took for the three females to move out was 7 to 8 seconds, but here it is, hours later, and I am still reeling from the shock of being offered etiquette lessons from someone who just months ago was attending the Junior Prom. 

Years ago - even before the age of cell phones - the Roman orator Cicero went around saying, "O tempora, o mores!". It was all right for him to speak in Latin, as that's what everyone did back then. The expression means "Oh, the times! Oh, the customs!", and Cicero was talking about the decline in manners and proper behavior in the days of the Roman Republic. 

Maybe I should say that to her the next time she tries to get an old man hustling.

Last Call

I can't say for sure, but we've all heard that after the Titanic hit an iceberg, the band played the hymn “Nearer, My God, to Thee.”

We don't know for sure if the bandleader was taking requests, or if he thought of that number on his own. 

But recently, at the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, N.J, the well-to-do put on the feedbags and heard that song while having the dinner served on the ill-fated ship as its last supper. And the guests were served a cocktail called "Nearer, My God, To Thee."

(Could I just have a glass of beer, please?)

It must have been at least a bit eerie to chow down on soup (consommé and cream of barley) and main courses such as salmon, duckling and squab. While everyone talked about how it must have been aboard the Titanic as the craft took  on water, the guests were taking on desserts such as peaches in chartreuse jelly, éclairs and French ice cream. 

A cookbook author and food-television personality named Gail Simmons threw the shindig. “We made the portions smaller,” she said, and she also cut the meal down from ten courses to seven.

The thought is that the diners hit the hay shortly after dinner was over (no karaoke that night) and you have to figure, the last thing anyone was worrying about was sinking a supposedly unsinkable ship.

Surprise!

Back to the bill of fare, because some of the survivors tucked a menu in their pockets that night, that's how we know what they ate. But none of the recipes survived, so today's chefs have to guess.

Around the Lazy 'C' chuckwagon, I use the traditional Clark family recipe for Salmon in Mousseline Sauce. I just run out to the garden and, just before cooking the fish, I cut up some fresh mousseline, right off the mousseline bush.

And a guy in traffic recently shared his recipe for Consommé Olga when he hollered at me the name of a really great sauce only available in Tasmania until recently. The guy said to call his friend, whose full name is Olga Fack-Yaselph. She told me exactly what to do with my consommé.