Howard McNear

            On Wednesday morning I finished working out the chords for “Le Vide au Coeur” (The Empty Heart) by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            During song practice the persistent discordance of my B string got suddenly worse to an intolerable degree so I could barely stand to hear myself play. On one song I stopped and retuned at the beginning of each verse. But then I realized that the E string was way out of tune and after I tuned that the B string was only normally out of tune and therefore within my pain threshold. 

            In the late morning I took my bedding and clothes to the laundry. I was about to get on my bike when I realized I hadn’t brought my mask and so I took my bike and laundry back upstairs. On my way out again Benji came out of his door and informed me that my upstairs neighbour Cesar says that he has bedbugs and he’s killed thousands of them. I found this alarming because they could come down through the inside of the walls to my place. This week was the fifth anniversary of me getting rid of the last infestation and I really don’t want to go through that again. I hope he's been in touch with the landlord and the problem will be dealt with. 

            I was a quarter short to do my drying and so I went out to Fullworth to buy batteries for my tuner. But after buying five CR2032 batteries the change was only ten cents. I had twenty so I asked to trade two dimes and a nickel for a quarter. She was reluctant because she’d already closed the register but she gave me the quarter. 

            While my stuff was drying I went to the liquor store and bought twelve cans of Creemore just in case I drink a little more over the holidays. It normally would take me a month to drink twelve beers.

            I had a toasted tomato and cheddar sandwich for lunch. 

            At 16:00 I had a video chat with my daughter on Facebook. There were some technical glitches and it took a while to get connected, maybe because we were both calling each other at the same time. After we were chatting for a while my wifi went off for a few seconds and we had to reconnect all over and then later on my receiver turned off like it does once a day and when I turned it back on I couldn’t hear Astrid, even though she could hear me. I had to restart the chat again and after that everything was fine. We talked about my university life and her life in Montreal. I mentioned that this was the thirtieth anniversary of her first trip to Montreal and she figured out that she must have been in the womb at the time. She said she prefers the way that I used to totally cover Christmas trees with tinsel to the mi nimalist way that other people decorate. We ended up chatting for two and a half hours and are going to do it again next week. 

            I edited some more photographs that I’d made from scanned negatives. Three of them are black and whites from the mid 1980s and I corrected some damage marks so I can post them online. 

            I made a mini pizza from a slice of bread, tomato sauce and cheese and had it with a beer while watching two episodes of The Andy Griffith Show. 

            The first one was another lame one. The town has decided to get rid of the old cannon that’s been there for a long time and has gotten rusty. But they don't know what to do with it. Ellie suggests they should donate it to a museum but it’s decided that a museum wouldn't want it. Barney comes up with the idea to sell it and so the mayor appoints Barney and Andy to find a buyer. But they can’t find anyone until an antique dealer comes to town. Andy lies that the weapon was with Teddy Roosevelt at San Juan Hill and the dealer offers $175 for it. But later when Andy sees Opie with a pair of roller skates and he learns that he traded an old pair off cuff links for them while claiming they had belonged to George Washington, Andy chastises Opie for breaking the golden rule. When Opie says he was just following his example Andy realizes that he has done wrong. He confesses to the dealer but he still wants to buy it. Andy lowers the price to $20. Later the person that had planned on paying for a plaque to replace the cannon tells Andy that he got something better. A cannon that had belonged to Teddy Roosevelt. 

            In the second story Bee, Emma and Clara gossip the news that Barney has cut his finger while cleaning his gun into Barney shooting himself in the chest and dying. After Andy makes fun of them for gossiping Bee decides to prove that men are just as gossipy as women. When a shoe salesman comes to town, says he’s staying for a while but doesn't try very hard to pitch his wares, Bee plants that information to Andy and Barney. Barney wonders why a shoe salesman from New York would come to Mayberry. Andy asks the hotel owner Jason to keep an eye on his tenant. When the salesman asks for a TV and says TV is important to him Jason passes that info around. It finally builds up to the man being a big TV producer for the Manhattan Talent Show, but posing as a salesman while he scouts for talent. Wilber Finch has made no sales and is about to leave town when the men of town and their children line up in front of his door to buy shoes and to audition. Wilber makes a record number of sales and when he is leaving the men all discover that he really was just a shoe salesman. Bee waves at Andy and he realizes what happened. 

            One of the gossiping women was played by Sara Seegar, who started out in theatre and on the London stage. She played ten different roles on Bewitched. She played Mrs Wilson on Dennis the Menace. She married radio star Ezra Stone who she met while they were together in a failed show on Broadway. He played the teenager Henry Aldrich on the radio sitcom “The Aldritch Family". 

            Howard McNear played Floyd the nervous barber on the show for many years. My late friend Mike always thought that of all the characters on the show Floyd seemed like the one most likely to be a psycho killer.