Irene Tedrow

            On Tuesday morning I used my twenty five year old Epi guitar for song practice for the first time in a long time. Although I wiped the strings with a cloth before playing them my left hand fingertips were still black from playing chords on the old strings. It's weird that it goes out of tune on the B string during every song like my other two guitars but not as much, despite the fact that it hasn’t been humidified through the blasting heat and dryness of several winters in this apartment. It's clearly a better guitar than both the Oscar Schmidt and the Washburn and none of the machinery has ever malfunctioned. 

            I worked out the chords for the first verse and the beginning of the chorus for "Betty Jane Rose" by Serge Gainsbourg. I should have it done on Wednesday. 

            I weighed 88.9 kilos before breakfast. 

            I got an email from Albert Moritz telling me that he has time now to help me to prepare my poetry manuscript "Paranoiac Utopia" for publication. I misunderstood a previous message that I interpreted as meaning that he would never have time. He seemed to mean for me to do as much self editing of small errors as I could until he was free. He thinks we could have it ready to show to Michael Callaghan of Exile Press within a few weeks at most. I haven’t done any revisions of the manuscript since the ones I sent to him on December of 2019 other than of the opening poem “Junkshop Bizarre", which is the only one he'd previously offered suggestions for and so I sent that one to him this morning.

            After shaving and showering I didn't have time to do a seventh attempt at cleaning the inside of my oven door. I should have time however tomorrow and Friday. 

            I worked on my poem series “My Blood in a Bug.” 

            I weighed 88.7 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Yonge and Bloor. When I got back Benji was standing outside of our building and I started singing, “We stand on guard for thee.” I told him that I've put my name down at the Vina Pharmacy to get the covid vaccine. He complained that it should be as available as the flu vaccine. It will be. 

            I weighed 88.2 kilos after my bike ride. 

            I cut the video of the lightning footage to just under four seconds. Then I added to the end of it the National Geographic video about the snakes in Manitoba and started cutting out the parts that show people or anything else other than masses of snakes close up. I’ll edit some more tomorrow. 

            I weighed 88.4 kilos before dinner. Did that mango really weigh two tenths of a kilo? 

            I colourized a bit more of my skateboarder photo from the 80s. 

            I had a potato, a slice of roast beef and gravy for dinner while watching two episodes of Andy Griffith. 

            In the first story Andy and Barney are going through old case files from before they had their jobs. They find the first arrest of Otis for public drunkenness in 1941. Then they find a case of assault between Floyd the barber and Foley the grocer. When Barney sees that the case was never resolved Andy tells him to let it go. But Barney is obsessed with following proper legal procedure. He goes to interview Floyd and Foley and also Goober, who was a five year old witness at the time of the altercation. But in not leaving well enough alone Barney stirs up a hornets nest of forgotten memories. Foley gets punched in the nose again by Floyd, Floyd gets punched in the nose by Otis, who is a distant relative of Foley; Goober punches Gilley and even Opie gets into a fight at school as everyone starts to take sides. Finally Andy sits Floyd and Foley down, reminds them that they are friends and gets them to shake hands. In the end when Barney still won’t let it go Floyd punches him in the nose. 

            In the second story Opie and his friend Howie have put out a one page class paper for three cents but they aren’t selling. Andy and Barney advise Opie that in order to sell papers to adults they have to find adult stories like in the big paper. Opie and Howie decide to look for gossip like what appears in Mayberry After Dark. But instead of being subtle and only printing people’s initials they quote what they hear people say about others and use everyone's full names. Examples are that Bee Taylor says Mrs Foster’s chicken a la king tastes like cardboard, Sheriff Taylor says that the local minister's sermons are dry as dust, and Barney Fife says that Sue Grigsby is a bottle blond. When Andy, Bee and Barney read the paper the boys have printed they realize they have to gather every copy before anyone reads them. Bee comes to get Mrs Foster’s copy from her mailbox but Mrs Foster asks why she’s there. Bee has to say that she came for her chicken a la king recipe. So she has to agree to come over for dinner. Andy tries to get the preacher’s copy but the reverend got to it first and blackmails Andy into teaching Sunday school for a month of Sundays. Barney gets caught by jealous tough guy Harold Grimsby on his lawn and Harold thinks he’s trying to make time with his wife. They manage to gather all the papers but then Opie says they had so much gossip that they printed next week’s issue but then they threw it away. In the end Andy, Bee and Barney go to the dump to destroy the second issue but to read it first. 

            Mrs Foster was played by Irene Tedrow, who had a six decade career in acting. She played Mrs Janet Archer on the popular radio program “Meet Corliss Archer" and also when the show was on TV for one season. 

            Sue Grimsby was played by Vici Raaf, who was a regular on The Red Skelton Hour.