"I guess Ludeen the waitress
at Paul's can say 'Touche,'" Ivan said. "Last Sunday morning I was sitting in Paul's. Ludeen was doing her usually efficient job of waiting on me. I had a swelling on the back of my hand. I showed it to Ludeen. She asked what caused it. I gave her a smart-ass answer. I said I've been taking Viagra. She said, 'You're not supposed to hold it in your hand." But ol Ludeen got her comeuppance. Somebody forgot to put the lid on the bottle of Tabasco sauce (and it wasn't me). Remember that - it wasn't me. Ludeen came along and picked up the uncapped Tabasco and stuck it in her apron. Stained her apron. Curdled her disposition. Ruined her day. Just remember - it wasn't me."
"Mrs. LaDow, Randall's mother, works at LaDow grocery in Lebanon," Ivan said. "She lives in Cedars of Lebanon. I asked her if she had met Judy Hall yet. She said she had, and that she seemed like a real nice girl. I told her she was nice and she knew what she was doing. But I never called her a girl. I call her an old gal ever once in a while. But that's just a term of endearment."
"You know why they call left-handed pitchers south-paws," Ivan asked. "Because in the early days of baseball nearly all diamonds had home plate on the west. So when a left-handed pitcher was on the mound his pitching hand was always on the south side. True story."
"Laura Burgess and Betty Lull are equal employment opportunists when it comes to keeping waitresses busy," Ivan said. "Last Thursday at the Second Cup, Mary Beth was waiting on Laura. So Laura promptly spills her glass of water. Here comes Mary Beth, towel in hand and smile on her face, and she wiped things dry and kept a sunny disposition. Not to be outdone, Betty Lull, toward the end of her meal, managed to knock over her glass of water. Here come Kate, smile on her face, assuring Betty that everything was going to be all right. I and Linton didn't spill nothin'. And we both have a seeing problem. But we are extremely well-coordinated."
"The Presbyterian church had hitch rails in front of the church," Ivan remembered. "Rev. Faurot wanted to take them down. The board said 'No.' So Rev. Faurot took one down once every two months. In less than a year, he had them all down and nobody even missed them. That was back in the early '30s."
"Marian Freeman called me a Jackass in German," Ivan said. "She must have thought I was a dumbkoff not to know what she was saying."
"Roger Fricker stopped by the Second Cup last Friday morning," Ivan said. "Roger said he had been to see the vampires and they had taken some blood."
"Bruce and Bobbi Miles were all comfy listening to the rain pattering on the window pane," Ivan reported, "when BOOM they heard a loud noise. They were in bed on the second floor. Bruce and Bobbi had been varnishing windows on the third floor. They had taken the windows out. Bruce said to Bobbi, 'Did we put those windows back in?' Nupe. Bruce got his sox soaked traipsing across the floor to replace the windows. I don't know what it interrupted."
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