They Shoot Horses Don't They?

            On Friday morning during song practice there were some drug addicts out on Queen Street that I hadn’t seen in the neighbourhood before. They looked like they were desperately trying to make a score. The middler was a woman who didn’t seem in much better shape than they were. It didn’t look like one of them was very happy with the how the deal did or didn’t go down. One of them was standing across the street confronting the woman while shouting and gesticulating violently. I thought he might hit her but he didn’t and she didn’t seem upset at all. She just told him that he got the best deal she could offer him because they are friends.

I spent quite a bit of time working on my book cover. I typed some of a short story that I wrote in long hand a couple of years ago. I did some translations of parts of Les Enfants du Paradis and Les Ramparts du Sud.

            There was a 70% to 80% chance of rain during the time I normally take my bike ride, so I didn’t go. It didn’t rain here in Parkdale but it could very well have rained somewhere along my route. Instead of riding I did some knee exercises while listening to an episode of Amos and Andy. The shows are usually funny but this one was only mildly amusing.

            I watched the third episode of Maverick. This one stood out above the first two for its complexity. It was based on a story by Horace McCoy, who wrote “They Shoot Horses Don’t They?” and many other hard boiled crime novels that actually had an influence on the film noire genre of France. This show introduced Samantha Crawford, who would be a recurring character as a charming con artist. She was played by Diane Brewster. Her appearance here is an interesting coincidence to me because I just finished watching the complete Leave It to Beaver series and she played Beaver’s 2^nd Grade teacher in the first season. She also played the doomed wife of Dr. Kimble in the TV series The Fugitive.