Paperback of the week: Betty White's Teen-age Dance Book

Betty White's Teenage Dance Book (Permabook, 1959) is in the spotlight this week for no other reason than that I feel like throwing a teen-age dance party to celebrate the pleasing outcome of the election this week. Betty White and all the Golden Girls would totally be welcome, though note that the Betty White who penned this "gay and streamlined guide to modern dancing" is not the rascally octogenarian actress we all know and love but a "trained dancer and teacher of dancing" circa 1952. Kick out the jams, all you Betties!

Girl, you'll be a woman soon. But not too soon please.

I believe I mentioned that last Friday I had to nip out for a voluntary girls' health movie and discussion at my 9-year-old daughter's elementary school. It was mostly sweet and funny and full of gasps, sighs, whimpers and giggles along with a few sage questions (well, how do you insert a tampon anyway?) and gruesome hypotheticals (what if you get your first period in the middle of the classroom and you're too embarrassed to raise your hand and tell the teacher who happens to be a man?). The school nurse led the discussion and she did a very entertaining job of tap-dancing away from the questions that led inevitably to sex, as in, if starting to menstruate means you can officially become pregnant...how do you get pregnant? And is it possible to become pregnant without knowing it??? Like I said, gruesome hypotheticals, which the nurse was not permitted to explain—that voluntary health talk (and movie, I can only hope) doesn't happen until middle school.

I was sort of surprised that we were already going down this road. Wasn't preschool just...just...five years ago? I've been collecting retro sex-ed books like Facts of Life and Love for Teenagers by Evelyn Millis Duvall (revised edition, 1957) because they are so quaint, so removed from reality (hello, chapter devoted to "That question of petting"!). I thought I might sell them or better still, give them to the parents of, you know, older children as a kind of gag gift. Funny how that doesn't seem so funny anymore... Gag.

What I really need now is to lay my hands on a copy of Peter Mayle's Where Did I Come From?—see it here on my friend Burgin's vintage kid book blog—which I recall fondly from my youth (I think a neighbor had it). I've seen several vintage copies on my estate-sale rounds but they tend to be grubby, stained, split at the spine. All signs of a well-loved, well-read book but—grody. Onward to amazon, where a brand-new soft-bound is $9.95. I think I still have time to continue my quest for the perfect first edition paperback of Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. I think.

Paperback of the week: The Universe and Dr. Einstein

This week we nominate the 1953 Mentor Paperback edition of The Universe and Dr. Einstein by Lincoln Barnett (retail price Back in the Day: 35¢). Mr. Barnett's explanation of Einstein's theories is purportedly clear and simple enough for a high school chemistry to understand. Alas, I am no longer a high school chemistry student, so me no understand. Content is not the issue here anyway; it's the delightful cover, which I am certain must've spawned many an Omni magazine cover.

Benji forever

Back in the day, I was first in line when a new Benji movie came to our neighborhood cinema. I was probably the scrappy little mutt's biggest fan. That Benji was so funny! Remember the scene in the first movie when he gobbles up the crook's SnackPack? And the bad guy is like, what...? Butterscotch SnackPacks were my favorite. Mmmm. SnackPacks.

(Okay. I just googled SnackPacks to see if they're still available. They are still available, but apparently they're "nutritious" now and no longer served in a catfood-type can so they're not the SnackPacks of Proustian memory and therefore not worth revisiting.)

Anyway, when I spied a 5-DVD set of Benji movies in the $5 bin at Target, naturally I snapped it up. My kids love dogs, ergo, they will love Benji. So much better than that total bummer Marley & Me, which I so would not let my kids watch. Or the one with Richard Gere where the dog meets him at the train station every day till one day he...doesn't. And don't even talk to me about Old Yeller, a movie for masochists if ever there was one. Benji never dies!

But silly me did not consider the fact that Benji was made in the ’70s, a grittier time, for sure. Benji isn't exactly Serpico but there is a kidnapping plot and random acts of violence, like when Benji's girlfriend, a Maltese named Tiffany, gets kicked into unconsciousness by the criminals whose shenanigans are the motor of this plot. My kids haven't cried so much since The Beast was pursued by a pitchfork-wielding mob. Now Benji collects dust in the DVD closet, right next to Beauty and the Beast. I doubt we'll ever get to For the Love of Benji, probably my personal favorite, or that we'll read this 1975 paperback novelization. (Fun fact: these are the same kids who are mad at me because I won't let them watch or read The Hunger Games.)

If you're a Benji fan, check out this video. It's a trailer that features on-the-street interviews with "real" people who've ostensibly just seen the film. Too funny.

Paperback of the week: On the Road

I have a confession to make. I never finished Jack Kerouac's On the Road, never came close. I'm sorry—it's boring! Maybe I would like it now, but probably it's too late. In my college days, it was important to revere the Beats because they went to our university and warmed our barstools and killed their would-be lovers in our parks. But I just couldn't get into them—unless Frank O'Hara counts as a Beat. Does he count? I completely love Frank O'Hara.

The cover of this 1968 edition is pretty rad—no surprise since we've already established that Signet paperbacks are so ruling. Check out this person's handy flickr set devoted to On the Road cover art—I still like this one best. I also like the blurb on the back (especially the gratuitous capitalization):

Jack Kerouac, Hippie Homer of the turned-on generation, shocked the country from coast to coast with this wild Odyssey of two drop-outs who swing across America wrecking and rioting—making it with sex, jazz, and drink as they Make the Scene.

Shit, that book sounds awesome—why haven't I read it??

The trailer for the new movie version doesn't seem quite as awesome but it's got such a purdy cast. I predict I'll watch on Netflix, and only sleep through some of it, hopefully not the wrecking and rioting parts.

Clueless is a great movie.

I had the pleasure of accidentally stumbling across Clueless on cable a few months ago, something that rarely happens since I almost never deviate from what's on my Tivo. I don't think I'd seen it since it came out back in 1995, but let me just say, it totally holds up. No Jane Austen update/adaptation holds a candle to it (I'm looking at you, Pride & Prejudice & Zombies). Alicia Silverstone? Simply brilliant. Stacey Dash? So gorgeous, why didn't she go anywhere after that? Come to think of it, that was the apex of Alicia's career as well. Brittany Murphy, sigh. R.I.P. Only Paul Rudd has gone on to fame and fortune, though more often as the disaffected friend than adorable love object, which he so totally was as the uptight Mr. Knightley-ish ex-stepbrother Josh.

I don't have so many laudatory things to say about this silly tie-in book, Cher's Guide to...Whatever by H.B. Gilmour ("based on the characters created by Amy Heckerling"). It's so awful I can't even bring myself to quote from it. But unlike the movie, which doesn't seem at all dated (well, maybe the Uptown Julie Brown cameo), the book is a time capsule full of quaint references to the ’90s, including:

The Watchman (as in the hand-held TV), MTV (that it was once relevant), CDs, Christian Slater, Marky Mark, Buns of Steel, Smashing Pumpkins, Coolio, Nine Inch Nails, The Bridges of Madison County, Arsenio Hall, Prozac, The Body Shop, The Nature Company...

Who knows? If the movie had come out when I was in high school as opposed to when I was 27, I might've dug the book too.

Notes on camp

This weekend Lindsay is taking our younger daughter camping at the zoo. What a saint, right? It sounds like the opposite of fun to me—organized activities, no alcohol permitted and the hooting of the trains keeps you up all night. But he loves camping and between these zoo overnights and daddy-daughter camping weekends in various state parks, he's instilled a love of camping in our kids. So far I've managed to stay out of it, though I'm not sure how much longer I'll get away with it. All of my excuses—mommies aren't allowed to camp at the zoo!—have been contradicted by reality. Right now my stance is that I won't camp until we get a vintage Airstream or a teardrop trailer or anything that resembles the Barbie camper I had in my 70s youth (my kids have an identical one that I scored at an estate sale last summer). I love the vintage trappings of camping! Like these books—so cute. But actual camping? Do I have to?

You'd think that with an Eagle Scout for a father, I would be an accomplished camper by now, but I've never camped a day in my life. I never even went to sleepaway camp. In sixth grade, I went on a three-day field trip to a place called Thunder Mountain in Pennsylvania, but we stayed in cabins so I don't think that counts. And when I was in junior high, me and my friend Anne pitched a tent in my backyard but the night ended early, after some high school boys thrillingly put a dead fish in our tent. Truth is, I don't really know what my problem is with camping—I'm actually a big fan of nature, and not just as it's depicted in the super-saturated colors of vintage books. And considering that I've been stung by scorpions and bitten by tarantulas in the comfort of my own home, I'm not uptight about the critters. Probably it's just that I like my time alone when he takes them both camping. I go on shopping expeditions to ikea, to flea markets, to as many estate sales as I feel like in a single day. I run twice as far as I usually do, and eat ice cream for lunch. I take myself out to the movies and see things like Jane Eyre. I stay up all night watching old Masterpiece Theaters on Netflix. In other words, I totally party! This weekend it won't be quite like that—my older daughter has aged out of the zoo program so we'll be able to have a girlz nite of some kind. Haven't decided what we're doing yet—she wants to go out to dinner and then see Mirror Mirror but I'm more inclined to subject her to a marathon viewing of Pride & Prejudice on Netflix. She is almost 9—isn't she ready? Maybe if I say we can have ice cream for dinner...

I buy therefore I am

I was an English major in college. I like to read stories. And write about reading stories and sometimes write my own stories. Lindsay was a philosophy major. When we met, he was at the tail end of his senior year and I had one more to go. He was forever mumbling about some paper he was writing on the Marquis de Sade and something about Adorno and that funny math guy Leibniz and Rorty Rorty Rorty, the subject of his senior thesis. Who was this Rorty character and how could he be important if he was still alive? I was so self-involved with my D.H. Lawrence and my Chaucer that I never even bothered trying to understand what he was doing, just wishing that he'd hurry up and finish it so we could go sit on a roof and drink Carling Black Label and smoke cigarettes.

As we've moved from apartment to apartment to house in NYC, and then to Texas, we've carted most of our college books along with us. I know a lot of former college students get rid of their college books but we are in harmony on this point so neither calls the other out on it: "Why do we still have the Penguin Classic Boethius and the Norton Critical everything?" he never asks me. "Why do we have Quine's Word and Object and Heidegger's Basic Writings?" I never ask him. We are in silent agreement. When we are in our 80s and finally go back to get those doctorates we always meant to get, we'll have our dog-eared volumes strewn with barely decipherable marginalia at the ready.

We are not the only ones who cherish this dream. We went to an estate sale a while back that felt like a college bookstore going-out-of-business sale that happened to be held in a suburban tract house with a manicured square of lawn and a windmill out front. This guy had saved everything excellent, including lots of my beloved Modern Library books and vintage Signet paperbacks, and, surprise, surprise—Richard Rorty's Objectivity, Relativism and Truth. Lindsay snapped it up and tucked it under his arm. "Wait," I said. "You have that book." This I knew because I am the packer and unpacker of books. "No, I don't!" he said. "You're probably just mixing it up with Contingency Irony and Solidarity." I must've raised an eyebrow. "So what if I do have it? I'll send this copy to Jon" (a fellow philosophy major who went on to philosophy grad school and may well have his own copy of Objectivity, Relativism and Truth, though I think he was anti-Rorty, not that I know what that means). I looked at him like he was crazy and he went defensive: "I just want it, alright?"

Okay, I let it go. It's not rational. I hesitate to use such a loaded term in this context, especially as an irrational former English major, but it's not. The book is not rare or out-of-print. It's not expensive, or leather-bound or autographed. It's a book he already has, but it represents a past life, a familiar face unexpectedly bobbing up in a crowd. It's a nice feeling, right? And crikey, for just 25¢ what's the harm?

Me and my Shadows

I think I'm losing my touch because somehow it took me a whole week to notice that the official trailer for the latest Tim Burton-Johnny Depp collaboration, Dark Shadows, had been released. What the hell? I didn't even know it was in production! In addition to being a fan of the Burton-Depp oeuvre (though I don't believe they will ever, ever top Ed Wood), I'm a bit of a vampire buff. I came to terms with that previously here. I love True Blood, though a little less with each passing season. Every May, I self-loathingly download the latest slapdash volume in the Sookie Stackouse series (hmm...is that available for pre-order yet?). I look forward to seeing the final grotesque installment in the Twilight movie series at one of those theaters where alcohol is served. And Bram Stoker's Dracula is definitely, probably, I think on my list of the top 20 books of all time (I've never actually made such a list so I'm not 100 percent sure how it would shake out).

But I've never seen Dark Shadows—the Goth soap is a little bit before my time though I'm sure I would've watched with my mom if I hadn't been, like, a baby. (Thanks to her, I was an Edge of Night addict all through middle and high school.) Dark Shadows aired five days a week for around five years, so, you know, it's not like playing catch-up with an entire season of Mad Men or Breaking Bad over a single weekend. I don't think I've consumed TV on that scale since watching the first few seasons of Six Feet Under while pacing the narrow confines of my Brooklyn living room, a squalling newborn in my Over-the-Shoulder-Baby-Holder. Anyway, the Dark Shadows DVDs are not surprisingly of poor quality, production values of 1960s soaps not being quite on HBO levels. I could start reading these Dark Shadows novelizations written by Marilyn Ross (pen name for a Canadian writer by the name of Dan Ross)—apparently there are only 32 of them! I scored a nice stack at the church thrift shop in my hometown (no, my mom did not donate them) but I think it's more likely I'll just wait for the movie. The trailer made me guffaw at least three times—that's gotta be a good sign.

Everything's cuter when it's French, part 2

If you say it in French, aspiring to be the "perfect secretary" doesn't seem half bad. Imagine the outfits a parfait secretaire must wear! Doubtless entire chapters are devoted to the art of scarf-knotting but I can't read them because, you know, they're in French. Still, I think this book was worth a dollar just for its flashy cover design.

The French also manage to make umbrella sales seem like a desirable vocation.

Everything's cuter when it's French, part 1

In honor of the Oscar sweep of The Artist, a movie I totally loved, I'm going to devote the next few days to a few French things I have lying about, starting with this series of French classics published by Hachette's Le Livre de Poche (Pocket Books): L'espoir by Andre Malraux, Graziella by Lamartine, Eugénie Grandet by Balzac, La Jument Verte by Marcel Aymé, Claudine a l'Ecole by Willy et Colette, and L'Or by Blaise Cendrars. I initially passed them up at my favorite Goodwill because they seemed a little overpriced for ex-library books, not to mention in French and I don't speak French. But I returned several days later, relieved to find them still there as I'd been obsessing about their covers all week. I can't find a date on any of them, but they've got to have been published in the time of midcentury awesomeness, no?

I came to my Francophilia somewhat late in life; I suppose it sprang from working for the same French company on two separate occasions but really that could have just as easily gone the other way. Repeated viewings of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg helped, as did actually going to Paris on someone else's seemingly limitless expense account. I was raised an Anglophile by Anglophile parents who'd met and married in England (though they are not British) and was fed a steady diet of teatimes, Upstairs Downstairs, Forsyte Saga, Monty Python and all things Austen. What I love about England is the landscape, music, pints, accents and literature. But the French have them on design, food, Sancerre, fashion (apologies to Vivienne Westwood, Paul Smith) and just the ability to make everything look cuter, like, you know, sailor shirts. Or matchbooks. Or book covers. If I read/spoke French, it's possible I'd even prefer their literature, though it seems heretical to say so. But since I've read all my Flaubert, Stendahl, Balzac, Zola, in translation, I can never be sure.

Jean Dujardin's Villain Auditions from Jean Dujardin

Shelved

I buy books that I've never read because I want to read them. I buy books that I have read because I no longer own a copy—either I borrowed it or checked it out from the library or loaned it out and never got it back. I buy books that I already have because I discover a different edition that's more attractive and/or valuable (sometimes I get rid of the old book, sometimes I don't). I buy books I've already read to give to my friends and family. I buy books for my kids to read now. I buy books for my kids to read in the future. I buy books for my friends' kids to read now or in the future. I buy books for my kids' teachers. I buy books because their covers are irresistible. I buy books because sometimes I can't believe the book exists. I buy books with a vague intention of selling them. I buy books because I'm a collector and a completist.

The latter reason is why I bought these beauteous Anchor Doubleday paperbacks designed by Edward Gorey. I documented my obsession with this series here, and I'm glad to say I only have around 193 to go. I doubt I will ever read The American Transcendentalists or The American Puritans. Maybe The Secret Agent but I'm not a big Conrad fan. Basically, I bought them so I could admire them.

I love books, as tangible objects, but don't get the wrong idea—I also read lots of books on my phone. In this way, and probably no other, I'm practically like a Japanese teenager.

Two Fridays ago, I went to an estate sale at a home that had the sort of library that no one has anymore. In addition to several sets of Encyclopedia Britannica and various editions of the OED, they had a complete set of the Great Books of The Western World. The Yale Shakespeare. The Heritage Press/Limited Edition Book Club. Numerous Modern Library books. And great towers of Life, Look and Time magazines. The rest of their library consisted of hardcover best-sellers and paperback literary classics and trade paperback book club fodder. I scooped up practically every book written by Barbara Pym (even though I already have them all) and a few by Kingsley Amis that I didn't have. These folks had been true generalists and serious readers, though I'm sure, like most of us, they couldn't claim to have read every book in their library. Let the record show that I purchased the Heritage Press editions of Herodotus, Picture of Dorian Gray, and Somerset Maugham's Moon and Sixpence and not one appeared to have ever been cracked open. Will I crack them open?.

They had also been book subscribers—you forget that mail order book clubs were once commonplace. I understand, having just googled it, that the Book of the Month Club does still exist, but does anyone know anyone who actually subscribes to it? And if there is any real value to it? Okay, your first four books are just a dollar, but how about the rest? Somewhere online I read an argument in favor of mail-order books—they're relatively inexpensive, the selections are made by highly trained, knowledgable editors and you never have to worry about going out to a bookstore in bad weather, or worse, finishing a book in the evening and not being able to get a new one because the book store is closed. Um. Somehow I'm thinking the book clubs need to rethink their business model before it's too late. Their demographic is aging—dying. I've seen it firsthand.

At this estate sale, I was, as usual, the youngest person in the room. Several elderly folks wandered around, peering at titles, and their verdict was unanimous: "What a lot of books!" One remarked: "I've never seen so many books." Still another said: "I don't need any more books! I have enough at home." An elderly gent mused: "I need another book. I just finished mine. What was it again?" His wife prompted him: "Have you read this one? You like this author."

Many of my old friends and colleagues are writing books, creating content, apps, scrambling to keep the printed word relevant. Meanwhile, that Friday afternoon, I was feeling very much out of the game, having relegated myself to the role of scavenger/savior trying to build the perfect library before it all disappears. I felt like Lord Grantham in Downton Abbey—while all the useful people were out in the trenches in France, I was obsolete, shuffling around the library with a few elderly companions and tsking over the latest news from the front.

After I paid for my books, one of the estate sale ladies helped carry them to my car. It was raining and we leaned over the boxes as we walked, trying to keep them dry. We chatted:

Me: They sure had a lot of great books. Did you have a lot more yesterday?
Her: Yes, but not that much more. We don't get the people coming to buy books like we used to. Everyone has to have one of those Kindle thingies now!
Me: Well, I love my Kindle but that doesn't mean I don't love real books as well...
Her: I can't imagine reading on a machine. I used to be a teacher and I have to feel a book in my hands. Like I taught my kids, and now my grandkids, "Let's read a few pages and then stop, put the book down, and try to visualize what the author is saying."

I thought it must take her a very long time to finish a book, but I didn't say so. What's the hurry, right?

The REAL story of how I missed the O'Neil Ford estate sale

I am a big fan of children's nonfiction books that purport to be REAL or TRUE or ALL ABOUT—to be the last word on the subject at hand. The REAL book about easy music-making! The REAL book about farms! As opposed to all those unreal farm books, stuffed with their falsehoods and fictions. Like Charlotte's Web—E.B. White clearly had no idea what he was talking about. "Some pig"? Get real, ’50s kids!

I got The Real Book about Easy Music-Making, The Real Book about Journalism and The Real Book about Farms at a library sale that I wasn't optimistic about because it was at a new library, way out in the exurban sprawl. I was misguided. Even out in cookie-cutter subdivisions only just sprung from the scraped earth, there are old people donating their old books to new libraries. But the biggest surprise about these "real" books was the inscription on the inside cover: "The O'Neil Ford Family, Willow Way."

I don't know if people outside South Texas know from O'Neil Ford, but he was a renowned midcentury modernist architect who spent most of his professional life in San Antonio, where he designed or redesigned various public buildings and spaces, as well as a number of private homes (to live in an O'Neil Ford is definitely something to brag about). I was familiar with Ford's work, but I didn't know anything about Willow Way, so of course, I googled it and discovered that was the name of his homestead—a ramshackle ten-acre former farm on the South Side, which had been in his wife's family since the 1920s. Ford died in 1982, his wife in 2002. And the estate sale—which sounds like it must have been the mother of all estate sales—took place in late 2005, a year after I moved to San Antonio. How do I know this? Because my google search also turned up a link to a story about the sale in the San Antonio Current, written by my pal Elaine.



If you are a habitué of estate sales, you're familiar with the One that Got Away, the One You Missed, or most dreadful—the One You Arrived at Only In Time to See Someone Else Leaving With All the Stuff You Totally Would Have Bought If Only You Had Known That This Sale Should Have Been Your Top Priority. You can really get bogged down in the what-ifs and what-might-have-beens, so it's best not to dwell. You have to accept your limitations; it's simply not possible to hit every estate sale on a weekend, or to know which ones are really worth the bother. Classified ads must be parsed closely. Location must be considered. The pricing practices of the estate-sale companies must also be factored in. Based on that rough calculus, choices must be made. Don't get me started on what I could be missing at all the run-of-the-mill yard sales that make up the bulk of the classified section of the newspaper. The vast majority surely suck, but amid that sea of smeary black ink there are probably a couple of doozies every week. I'll never know.

Unfortunately, thanks to Elaine's article—in which she dodges wild poultry while previewing the eclectic offerings for the paper—I have a pretty good sense of what I missed at the O'Neil Ford sale, and seven years later I'm grinding my teeth just thinking about it. She interviews David Dillon, an architecture critic and old friend of Ford's, who describes him as an omnivorous collector:

I think what's visible at Willow Way is, on the one hand, the incredible range of interets, the kind of magpie quality of the collecting that [Ford] did, and to some extent the messiness of his life—it was not exactly clean in the traditonal sense—there were all kinds of ghosts, all kinds of loose ends, and they're all out there at Willow Way, too.

Arrgh! She should have told me! Why didn't she tell me? Sigh. Back then, I wasn't pursuing this interest with quite the same intensity. I certainly wasn't blogging about it; I was too busy on my other blog devoted to new motherhood and the culture shock of moving to Texas and blah blah blah. One detail in the article does more or less confirm that my books somehow wended their way from this fabulous estate sale to this pretty decent library sale to my overstuffed bookcases and this blog: "A small woodframe house with a hearth that could hold a Mini Cooper," she writes, "is given over entirely to silver-fish infested books inscribed 'Willow Way Library' in graceful penmanship."

Well, there you go. I didn't find any silverfish but a torn note, written in graceful penmanship, did fall out of the journalism book:

Dita-get book at library (if you want it) Cell & Psyche—Business & Science. Muir Library. Hairdo & manicure 10:00 Isabella. Take Neil's desk top to Mr. Schulz. Buy dish-washing soap and hairspray (ask Dita).

Who wrote the note? Who was out of hairspray? Who is this Dita and did she really want to check out Edmund Sinott's meditation on the mind-body question when she clearly had so many errands to run? (My best guess is that the book in the note is actually titled Cell and Psyche: The Biology of Purpose.) Will we ever know the REAL story of O'Neil Ford and his messy life? Who knows—who cares—I'll take the enigmatic detail, the tantalizing slice of life over the potted history anytime.

But I still wish I'd made it to that sale. Somehow I think I would have left with more than just a few books.

Mule madness

Raise your hand if you used to watch Francis the Talking Mule on Saturday mornings!

Anyone?

No?

I used to watch Francis movies. Abbot and Costello movies. Charlie Chan movies. Okay, so maybe my TV viewing wasn't confined to the morning—it must've seeped into the afternoon... Because I also used to watch actual shows, like The Bugs Bunny-Pink Panther Laugh and a Half Hour and a Half Show. See, right there—90 minutes of morning television. I can't imagine what my kids would watch if I just let them have unfettered access to the TV for an entire Saturday. As it stands, their weekend morning viewing depends on how early they rise and how busy our day might be. If fairly early and not too busy, they crawl into bed with us and watch an hour of TV, mostly retro cartoons saved on our Tivo, while we lie there with pillows over our heads wondering why we bother even pretending we can stay up late and get crazy on weekend nights. Sigh. Anyway, right now Space Ghost, The Herculoids and Galaxy Trio are in heavy rotation. Left to their own devices, who knows.

I digress. Francis. Apparently the popular 1950s film franchise about the droll Army mule was based on this novel, not the other way around. I am sure I will never read it, though I dig the cover (especially the back cover). (But is that grounds for keeping it?) The guy behind the movies went on to create Mr. Ed, which is quite possibly one of my favorite shows of all time—and talk about having a good idea and running with it, huh? A little peanut butter on the gums and voila! Wisecracking equine! Never gets old!

On the subject of Saturday-morning animal shows, I am reminded of Run Joe Run. I'm not sure if I ever loved a show as much as I loved this one. The drama, the heartache. Imagine The Fugitive but the wronged protagonist on the run is a German shepherd, falsely accused of attacking his beloved trainer. Unlike Francis, Joe was a very intense, taciturn fellow. Watching this clip makes me a little verklempt. Don't think my kids could handle it.