Lory Patrick

            On Monday morning I finally memorized the first seven verses of “Variations sur Marilou" by Serge Gainsbourg. I think that this song would be easier to retain if all of the verses were totally different from one another. But some of the imagery such as “her look of absence and her eyes of absinthe" are repeated  with slightly different phrasing each time and so it's hard not to get them mixed up. I just have one verse to go and I’ve already nailed down the first half of that.

            Around midday I wanted to polish the vintage dresser in my bedroom but decided to look for the front of the top right drawer just to set it in place for aesthetic reasons even though the drawer itself is in pieces. I looked through all the boards that I’d put on the left side of my upper shelf but I couldn’t find it. I looked through my apartment but its whereabouts became an increasingly annoying mystery. It was impossible for it not to be here somewhere but after an hour I gave up the search because lunch was approaching. Thinking about it later it occurred to me that it could be in one of the big plastic storage containers on the upper shelf so I decided that I’ll look for it again on Wednesday.

            I had tuna and salsa with chips for lunch.

            In the afternoon I did my exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. This was the first episode of the fall of 1953. There had been a rumour that the end of May of that year would be the final season but they continued on until the spring of 1955.

            In this story Kingfish’s mother in law Ramona throws her back out while trying to show off her dancing ability. Her daughter Sapphire says it’s luck that Kingfish has been making payments on their accident insurance, but he hasn't. When Ramona is released from the hospital Kingfish tries to pay the bill with a cheque even though he does not have a bank account. He writes the cheque from a fake account at the Hudson’s Bay Bank of Saskatchewan Canada. He tells the manager that he's Canadian as his father was a Canuck and his mother was a Labrador Retriever. He says the bank has a branch in New York and he has Andy sitting by the phone to receive the call and confirm that the cheque is good. The manager agrees to accept the cheque but when it bounces the lawyers come after Kingfish and threaten to involve the police. Kingfish cashes in his fire insurance to pay the hospital bill but when he comes home he sees fire trucks in front of his place. They got everything out but Sapphire fell while carrying something and hurt her hip and so she needed the accident insurance that Kingfish didn’t have.

            I went for a bike ride to Yonge and Bloor, down to Queen and then home.

            It wasn’t too hot in the evening to use the stove and so I had a potato, sautéed yellow pepper, a chicken breast and gravy while watching the last episode of “Tales of Wells Fargo” that I had. The story begins with a young man named Chauncey rabbit hunting with his uncle. Chauncey kills the rabbit but keeps on firing at it over and over until his uncle stops him. The uncle has raised Chauncey for ten years since his parents died and he’s had enough. He kicks Chauncey out. Later Jim Hardey learns that the Wells Fargo station agent at Willow Creek has been murdered. He goes to the station office in Glory Be where the telegraph operator introduces him to his new employee, Chauncey Evans. Jim asks Chauncey where he’s from and he says Salinas. Jim says he must have come through Willow Creek but Chauncey says he came through the mountains. Jim finds that strange and asks the clerk to do a reference check. At Willow Creek Jim discovers that no money was stolen from the safe and that all the killer took was the agent’s watch. Chauncey shows up at the local school where the pretty Tina Swenson is the school teacher and asks to be tutored. She says it’s against the rules for someone his age to attend classes with the children but she’ll try to work something out. That night he comes calling at her home. She finds it inappropriate but when he gives her a painting that he made she is so impressed that she warms up to him and agrees to step out for a walk. He begins quoting from “Ode to a Grecian Urn” by Keats and how it relates to his theories of time and power. She’s really falling for him now. Meanwhile Jim discovers that Chauncey has a similar watch to the one that belonged to the agent that was killed. He confronts him about it but learns that the stolen watch was a stem wind and this one is a key wind and he apologizes. But then he learns that there was a mistake and that the stolen watch was a key wind. Around that time Tina goes missing. Chauncey takes her by force to a big house in Willow Creek that looks like the Psycho house. He forces his way in and makes the old rich couple serve them wine. Jim sneaks into the house and grabs Chauncey. They struggle and the gun goes off, killing Chauncey. Tina notes that it was Chauncey’s twenty sixth birthday and that Keats died at the same age.

            Tina was played by Lory Patrick, who was in “Surf Party” and “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying”.  She was married to Harlan Ellison for three months and then to Dean Jones for forty two years until he died. He became a born again Christian shortly after they got married so one assumes that she did too otherwise he would have made her life a living hell.

Chauncey was played by Burt Brinckerhoff, who went on to become a director of many TV shows and was nominated for three Emmys for his work on Lou Grant.