CHATTY CATHY!

The first doll I ever had was a Chatty Cathy doll. She looked like the doll above except she had blond hair. I got her for X-Mas and I could pull a string on the back of her neck and she would talk. I carried her everywhere with me. Several months after X-Mas, the little round ring on the end of the string broke and the string went through the hole in her neck and into her back. I was disappointed that she wouldn't talk. My dad said he would fix her. He brought her back to me sometime later and said that he had a little bit of trouble but that he had fixed her and she could talk again. I turned her around to pull the string and....yeah....I could get to the string....because she didn't have a back anymore. My dad had chipped and chipped and chipped away her back trying to get to the string until.....well, she just didn't have a back anymore. But, boy, she could talk.

Bless Dad's heart, he always meant well. One time, I went home for a visit and he told me he would change the oil in my car for me. He got confused, drained out all the antifreeze and refilled it with oil. He felt so bad about it! I felt sorry for him. He had to take it to a mechanic and I couldn't leave till it was fixed. I missed work the next day and everything. He could never understand after that why I wouldn't let him work on anything of mine. He would say I only messed up once.

Um....I got off track, didn't I? Anyway, does anybody remember The Chatty Cathy doll? When I looked for her picture on the internet, several versions came up. Did you have a Chatty Cathy doll? If so, what did she look like?

JOHNNY QUEST!

Boy! Did this ever bring back memories! Do you remember Johnny Quest?

Topo Gigio!

The Editor is six years younger than me and most of the time, it doesn't make a difference. But once in a while......he has no earthly idea what or who I'm talking about. It's like Angel said in her blog (and you'll just have to look at the list of blogs I follow cause I don't know how to paste her blog in here) about how her husband is older and he loved Dark Shadows while she didn't know what Dark Shadows was. When I was a little girl, I used to watch The Ed Sullivan Show and I loved Topo Gigio. He was a little mouse. Here's how our Topo Gigio conversation began last night....

Me: Hey, do you know who Topo Gigio is?

The Editor: Sounds like something that can be cured by Penicillin.

OUCH! I'm getting old!!!!!!!!





More info on Topo Gigio:
Topo Gigio was the lead character of a children's puppet show on Italian television, in the early 1960s. The character was created by artist Maria Perego in 1958 and has been customarily voiced by actor Giuseppe (Peppino) Mazzullo. The name means "Louie Mouse" in English.

Topo Gigio, a soft foam mouse with dreamy eyes and childish personality, was very popular in Italy for many years — not only on TV but also in children magazines, such as the classical Corriere dei Piccoli, animated cartoons, movies, and merchandising. Its popularity spread to the world after being featured on Ed Sullivan's weekly TV show in the U.S. Today Topo Gigio still has a cohort of faithful fans, and has become an icon of Italian pop culture. He performs regularly at Zecchino d'Oro festival and other programs created by Antoniano and RAI. In 1965, a feature length motion picture Le Avventure di topo Gigio (The Adventures of Topo Gigio) was released internationally.

The endearing puppet has made appearances and has a fan base in many other countries — including Dominican Republic, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Japan, Mexico, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Perú.

SHOE SHINE BOY

One time, when I was about five years old, my mom took me down to the barbershop to visit my dad. He had just hired a shoe shine boy. The boy was sitting in a chair in the back of the shop. I walked up to him and said, hi, what's your name? He said, my name is Jimmy. I crawled up in his lap and said, well...........I think I'll just call you honey. My dad said he was so embarrassed he "just bout died." :)

THE RIGHT DOLL

When I was a little girl, my mom and dad would give me the Sears Roebuck catalog and let me pick out stuff for X-Mas. One year, I picked out a doll I wanted. There were two pictures of the same doll....one was black, one was white. I wanted the black doll. I went to my mom and dad and showed them the doll. They said I couldn’t have the black doll but I could have the white doll. I didn’t understand but I didn’t ask them why not. I wasn’t one to ask questions when I was a child. Now that I’m grown, I still don’t understand why I couldn’t have that black baby doll. Only difference is now that I’m grown, I ask questions. The election has brought all this back to me. Question: What is the difference between a black doll and a white doll? Answer: The only difference between the dolls is the color. They are made exactly the same.
One of the merriam webster definitions of prejudice is an irrational attitude of hostility directed against an individual, a group, a race, or their supposed characteristics.
If you didn’t vote for Obama because you thought who you did vote for would do a better job for our country, I can understand that. But if you didn’t vote for Obama because of the color of his skin.....well......that just makes me sad.

SO WHO WAS THIS OLD LADY, ANYWAY?

Saturday night, at The Reporter’s going away party, I told this story and everybody said I should put it on the blog so here goes. When I was a little girl, my dad didn’t have a phone in the barbershop. Customers just showed up and waited their turn. About every two or three months, my dad would get this phone call at home from an old lady. I can’t remember her name so I’ll just call her Ms. Selby. She would call at night, not late, 7:00 p.m. or so, and she’d say, Mr. Sherrell, this is Ms. Selby and I’m sending the boys down tomorrow for a haircut. Dad would always say okay, Ms. Selby, send them on down. The first few times she called, he didn’t ask any questions, he would just wait the next day for the boys to show up but they never did. This went on for 20 years or so. As time went on, Dad tried asking her all kinds of questions like, Mrs. Selby, what’s the boys’ names, how old are they, are they walking to the barbershop or are you driving them down? But she never would answer his questions, just kept saying she was sending them down and then she’d just hang up. After about 20 years, the calls just stopped. Dad said she sounded old in the beginning so he just figured the calls stopped because she died. His theory was that the boys were probably grown when she started calling and that she was senile. Back then, they didn’t really call it Dementia or Alzheimer. But, on the other hand, she remembered Dad’s number and called him by his last name. Dad tried to look her up in the phone book, no luck. He asked his customers about her, no luck there either. West Plains was a small town when I was a kid, I mean, everybody knew everybody, but nobody knew a Ms. Selby.
Somebody at the party Saturday night thought maybe she was a ghost. What do you think?

BIZZY BUZZ BUZZ

This was my favorite toy of all time. Did anybody else have one of these? See the point at the end of the bee's nose? That's a pen. The pens were interchangeable. It ran on batteries. You would put whichever color pen you wanted in the nose, turn on the batteries, and it would write little squiggly lines all over the page. I wish I still had mine!

Um, does a bee have a nose? I guess that's a question for The Editor. He loves bees and when he grows up he wants to be a bee keeper. He already has the bee suit and everything!

WHERE WERE YOU THE DAY J.F.K. WAS SHOT?

On that day, November 22, 1963, I was only 2 ½ years old. My dad was off work and I was at home with him. I didn’t really understand what was going on. I remember my dad just jumping up, scooping me up, running outside with me and placing me in his 1957 Chevy. He got in the driver’s seat and drove really fast to the doctor’s office where my mom was a nurse. He scooped me up again and headed into the doctor’s office. He asked where my mom was. She came walking down the hall. He said, "Norma, Kennedy’s been shot." And then my mom was upset just like my dad was. It’s all a bit of a haze to me now and I don’t really know how much I comprehended at that young age but I remember as word spread throughout the office, patients and nurses began to get upset like my mom and dad. It was an awful feeling to be that little and see everyone like that. It was like this wave of shock that covered everyone in the doctor’s office until little by little, everything went from sunshine to darkness.

WHAT'S THE VERY FIRST MEMORY YOU HAVE?

The first memory I have was before I was the age of two. The house next door was owned by a local church in my town. I can’t remember their names but the family consisted of the preacher, his wife, teenage daughter and twin boys.

I remember hearing music from next door and even though I wasn’t even two years old, I went to investigate. I was still wearing diapers and I can remember the feel of the diaper as I waddled next door. The teenage girl had one of those record players that played 45's. She was playing "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" by the Beatles. That is the very first memory I have.

I don’t know why I’m such a huge music fan. Was it because my dad was a musician? Or could it be because a less than two year old baby girl was swept up into the mop top frenzy?

My Home Town

I grew up in a small town in Missouri. West Plains – hometown of Porter Wagoner. That just about says it all. I wasn’t country when country was cool. I left there when I was 18. Actually, I ran. Didn’t look back, didn’t pass go, didn’t collect $200.00. I’ve been in Little Rock for almost 30 years now. West Plains, MO and Little Rock, AR. Two very different worlds. What was it like living in a small town where:

1. there were no stoplights. Just four-way stops;
2. your dad was the hometown barber;
3. the only radio station in town played country until 5:00;
4. you went to the grocery store and didn’t just run into somebody you knew…you knew most everybody in the cars that you passed on the way to the store, every customer and every employee there;
5. you were a 15-year-old girl who was a huge KISS fan while all your other girlfriends were into Shaun Cassidy.

Well, let’s see. It was a trip. I’ve always said God gave me two things……my dad and a sense of humor. Yeah, I was out of there as soon as I graduated from high school. I love Little Rock and would never go back. But as I grow older I realize that I’m glad I grew up in that little town. Home of Preacher Roe who was a famous baseball player back way before I was even born. I cherish the good memories and have come to terms with the bad ones. I’m gonna blog about lots of experiences, feelings and just clutter in my head. There will be lots of stories of WP….gotta write about it…..before I get so old I can’t remember what it was like to be a kid growing up in a small town.

GROWING UP IN THE BARBERSHOP

My daddy was a barber for almost 50 years. He had a little barbershop in WP for more than 40 years. He’s retired now but I have fond memories of that barbershop. I pretty much grew up there. My mom worked too so I spent a huge part of my life in daddy’s barbershop.
His shop was really small. He didn’t take appointments.....if you wanted a haircut...you just showed up and waited - first come, first serve. He didn’t even have a phone. WP was a small town back then. It was a farming community and those farmers would just come in and wait until it was their turn.
Daddy was a musician. He played harmonica and guitar. He had this area set up in the back of the barbershop with coffee and chairs. Customers would bring their musical instruments with them and they’d play in the back until it was their turn. You never knew who was gonna be there. Sometimes you’d walk in and in the back there would be a fiddle player and a guitarist. Or a singer with a guitar. Or five or six musicians jamming. Once in a while, my dad would be in the middle of a haircut, the music would get all geared up and dad would say, wait a minute, and he’d leave the customer in the chair and run back and start playing harmonica with the boys. Sometimes the customer in the chair wasn’t real happy about this but I never knew if it was because he wasn’t getting his haircut as fast as he wanted or because he wanted to be back there playing too! Other times, the customer would be having so much fun listening to the music that he didn’t seem to care if dad was cutting his hair or not. Since a lot of the customers were farmers, they didn’t have to be back to work at a certain time.
Sometimes the customers would pay daddy with food instead of money. He came home lots of times with stuff like honey, eggs, etc. And Christmas was really cool. Every year this lady would make peanut brittle and daddy would bring it home. I didn’t even know her name.....we just called her the peanut brittle lady and I looked forward to him bringing it home every year.
I was always the only girl hanging out down there. I was pretty quiet when I was a kid (what the heck happened!!!) and those customers would forget I was there. Boy, the stories and the cussing I heard......my mom would have had a fit if she’d known. When the customers would get to talking about things my mama would have had a fit over, my daddy would just look around the barbershop till he found me and caught my eye and he’d give me this look like, it’s okay. I loved that barbershop and have such wonderful memories of my dad. To this day, I’m more comfortable in a room full of men. Especially if there’s music around.

THE REASON I'M AN ONLY CHILD

When I was a kid, my mom went to the beauty shop every Thursday night. In the 70's, she had this B-52 hairstyle like Kate Pierson......except not as cool as Kate’s. She would come home Thursday night and her hair would be all nice and teased up. She looked like a conehead! Birds could have lived in that thing. I mean, it was just scary!
She wore this thing on her head in bed at night that was supposed to keep her hair from getting mussed up. It was made out of sponge covered with terry cloth. It wrapped around her head and then fastened with velcro. It was bright blue. My mom was the original Marge Simpson. That contraption didn’t work very well either. Each day her hair would fall a little more...a little more.....until her hair would start to look like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I’d love to have a picture of that thing and have searched on the internet to no avail.
I know, in my heart, that headband thingie is the reason I’m an only child. If I were my dad, I wouldn’t have touched it with a ten foot pole. Talk about cheap birth control!