Michele Lee

            By Monday the only part of the wound that I sustained from my bike fall that still hurt was the part under the slowly shrinking black scab that’s directly on my elbow. A little bit of the scab is curling at one end and it’s itchy but I’ve passed the stage where I exclaim "Oh fuck!" during certain yoga poses.

            I washed three undershirts and a pair of shorts and put them out on the deck railing to dry in the sun. I always have to clean some bird shit off the railing beforehand but at least the birds never seem to feel like pooping on my laundry once it’s there. It looks like they prefer the naked railing.

            It was a pretty hot day but it seemed a little cooler than for the last two. Instead of making hot coffee with breakfast I drank the java that I'd put in the fridge overnight. At lunchtime I was actually able to eat lunch for the first time in a couple of days and had some tuna with cucumber and mayonnaise.

            There was a chance of thunderstorms in the early afternoon and though that didn’t happen other than a quick shower at around 16:20, I decided to take a rain day anyway and not take a bike ride. I needed to finish my review of Shab-e She’r, which was almost a week past the event. Even though I’d kept my diary up to date I couldn't post my other journal entries until I'd finished the review. I didn’t want to post it on or after Tuesday because then when it said "on Tuesday” I wouldn’t have to explain that it was the Tuesday before that I was talking about rather than the Tuesday of this week.

            That I grilled the chicken I’d bought on Saturday and had a leg with a potato and gravy while watching Dobie Gillis.

            The first story involved Dobie helping a girl that he likes named Lila baby-sit for a football star named Truck Horse who has several kids. Truck works to support his family but also goes to night school and plays for the team. But he is so devoted to his kids that he worries about them constantly and rushes home from school, work and games to see if they are all right. Dobie dedicates himself to helping the athlete out. He gets his father to give him a discount on groceries so Truck can quit one of his jobs and he makes sure the kids are taken care of. The day of the big game Dobie arranges to surprise Truck by having his wife and all the kids in the stands. But when Truck calls home and no one answers he runs home. The game starts and Truck will get kicked off the team if he’s not in the game and so Dobie’s father, Dobie and Maynard each take turns on the field wearing Truck’s number and all get carried out on stretchers.

            The character of Lila was played by Michele Lee, who later became a star on Knot’s Landing, appearing in all 344 episodes. In the 60s she had a hit with the song “”L. David Sloane”, which I remember that I liked when I was 13, though I’d always thought she was singing, “Help, David Sloane, leave me alone!” She was married to James Farentino.

            In the second story, Dobie’s father, Herbert is running for planning commissioner but he has no real platform. His opponent, Cheever is running on tearing down the slums on the north side and building new homes for the people of the neighbourhood. Dobie decides to campaign against his father because he thinks Cheever is right. Things get so tense that Dobie moves out and rents a room in the slum. When Herbert goes to see him there he realizes that he was wrong. Suddenly he tells everyone not to vote for him but for Cheever, while Cheever thinks everyone should vote for Gillis now that they are on the same side because he’s a better speaker. Herbert wins, but of course there’s no continuity on this show. He won’t be planning commissioner in the next episode.