BIONIC TOOTHBRUSH

My husband has found this scary looking gadget he calls a “bionic toothbrush.” It is a bristle-covered wire. He pokes it between his teeth. My teeth are too tight to do that because my mouth is small. Physically, that is. It’s often too big. Just ask my husband. Ask anyone, in fact.

Some people have big mouths and some have small mouths. But everyone has a mouth. Especially the guys on Fox News.

DRIVING IN RALEIGH IN 1942

(This is another one of Pop's stories. He left home at age 15 to work in the shipyards in Brunswick, Georgia. He was driving in Raleigh before that age.)

I didn't know anything about driving licenses back then when I left for Brunswick, Georgia. Didn't know you were supposed to have one. Hell, I'd owned a car by then. I bought an old '31 Pontiac from a fellow back there in the woods. Way back in there. The damn thing would run. So that's all that needed to be. I paid him thirty-five dollars for it, something like that. If it ever had a title to it I don't remember it. I finally sold it to somebody for seventy-five dollars.

But I wasn't even aware of the fact that you were supposed to have a driver's license or that there was supposed to be a license on a car. There weren't but about thirty-five patrolmen in the whole state of North Carolina. And the speed limit was 55 back then, and there won't no way in the world you could hardly find anything that would run 55 miles an hour. If you did, you couldn't have stayed on the road.

That first streak of highway out of Raleigh, old 70 highway from Raleigh to Clayton, was the first road that was paved in North Carolina. And they paved it just the way the hog path went. It was so hilly and crooked there won't no way in hell you could run 55 miles an hour. But all along, you'd see the speed limit sign, 55. And finally, on Water Creek Hill, they put a sign at 45 miles an hour. That was a big joke, because there won't no way in the world nobody could run 45 miles an hour. Didn't have nothing strong enough to run up that hill that fast. Everybody thought they were going to get tickets because they couldn't run 45 miles an hour.

Peach Mush

A fresh peach tastes like nectar of the gods. OK. I believe in one God, but it’s a good phrase.

The grocery store (I won’t call names) should be ashamed, embarrassed, and mortally humiliated by the poor excuse of a peach I bought. MUSH! Peeling them was a challenge. They squashed between my fingers. Those peaches were only edible when I buried them in lemon and sugar and baked them in a pie. Peach mush is OK in a pie.

I went to a peach farm once, and they said you can’t pick them ripe to sell them because they’ll be over-ripe in a day. So you pick them prematurely. So they’ll ripen on the shelf – and then turn to mush.