Connie Sawyer

            

            On Saturday morning my Washburn's B string still went out of tune a few times but not by much and I finished song practice ten minutes earlier than usual. I'm getting used to playing this guitar again although I miss how the Rocker electric almost never went out of tune. I'm still considering buying a better guitar when the pandemic is over and maybe even getting my Epi repaired.

            I finished memorizing "Brigade des stups" (The Drug Squad) by Serge Gainsbourg and tomorrow I'll look for the chords. 

            I weighed 89.1 kilos before breakfast. 

            In the late morning I took a bike ride and on my way up Brock I found a box of things some people were throwing out because they were moving. There were plates, mugs and glasses and also some food. I didn't take the sugar or the oatmeal but I grabbed the carton of organic buttersnut squash soup, the sweet and sour cherry jam, the jar of pepper jelly and the package of "chili and spices" drinking chocolate by Soma, the chocolate maker on Brock, a block or so away. I rode to Yonge and Bloor. 

           On my return to Parkdale I didn't feel the need to stop and pee at my place as I usually do and this time went straight to No Frills. I bought eight bags of grapes, two bags of cherries, a pint of blueberries, a loaf off cinnamon-raisin bread, a jar of Bolognese pasta sauce and some skyr. 

            When I got home I remembered that I planned on cooking salmon tonight and so I went back out to the corner store to buy two lemons. 

            I weighed 87.7 kilos before lunch an hour later than usual. I had saltines with old cheddar and a glass of lemonade. 

            I weighed 88.2 kilos at 18:00. 

            I worked on my poem series "My Blood In A Bug." 

            I worked on the section of the video for my song "Instructions For Electroshock Therapy" that features the female end of a cord being plucked from a dancing bouquet of cords. I cut out all the parts that show the end of the cord outside of the frame. There were three shots of my hand bringing the cord towards the camera and I deleted the two that showed less distinctly that it was a female end. Next I have to shorten the time between plucking the cord and bringing it forward. 

            I fried a salmon fillet in butter, olive oil, garlic, honey and lemon juice. I had it with naan and a beer while watching two episodes of Andy Griffith. 

            In the first story there wasn't much of a story. Aunt Bee hears Andy, Helen, Goober and Howard talking about the big moments in their lives. Andy scored a winning touchdown in high school, Helen won a spelling Bee in Grade 8, Goober won a pancake eating contest and Howard went to the Caribbean. For some reason Bee feels like she's done nothing in her life to compare with those things. There is no mention of all the blue ribbons she's won for her cooking, for breeding roses and the fact that she had her own TV show, all of which trump the other achievements that are mentioned. When she hears about flying lessons she decides that's what she wants to do. Andy tries to talk her out of it but she goes ahead and after eleven lessons she flies the plane by herself, circling the airport and landing, thus earning her solo flight diploma. 

            The second story has more substance. Helen asks Andy to look through a box of her keepsakes from Kansas City for a folder containing the outline for a history course. He finds it but he also finds a newspaper clipping that shows Helen being arrested in Kansas City. He puts the clipping in his pocket and begins to investigate. He's looking at the clipping at his desk when he is called away and then Goober and Howard come in to find it. Andy says not to tell anyone and Goober swears his lips are sealed but he springs a leak without even being aware of it while talking with Mrs Pendleton, the chairman of the PTA. Andy calls the paper in Kansas City and a Miss Blanchard looks into it, but all she finds is that Helen was arrested on three counts. She had a pistol in her purse, she was dealing cards in an illegal gaming establishment and she was associating with a known gangster. Goober unconsciously leaks that information to Mrs. Pendleton as well and so she orders a spec ial meeting of the PTA and has Helen come. Helen is the only one in town that doesn't know what's going on. Andy goes to Mount Pilot to talk to a judge he knows to see if he can get access to Helen's court records. At the PTA meeting Mrs. Pendleton asks Helen about the three charges and she admits that it is all true. Helen is about to get fired when Andy walks in to explain the whole thing. Helen was writing her Masters thesis on organized crime and decided to go under cover to do so. Mrs Pendleton and the board apologize and so does Andy but he's in major shit for causing all this trouble rather than simply trusting and asking Helen about the clipping in the first place. 

            Mrs. Pendleton was played by Ruth McDevitt, who was born in 1895. Although she studied drama when younger she gave it up when she got married. But when she was thirty nine years old her husband died and she got back into local theatre. She went to New York and got work acting on Broadway and on radio. During the war she played Jane Channing on the radio soap opera "This Life Is Mine." In the 50s she worked on television and played Mom Peepers on "Mr. Peepers" and she played a sharp shooting granny on "Pistols and Petticoats." She played advice columnist Emily Cowles on "Kolchak the Night Stalker." 

            Miss Blanchard was played by Connie Sawyer who was known as the clown princess of comedy. She played Martin Balsam's mother on "Archie Bunker's Place." She worked as an actor for 85 years until she died at 105. She started out singing and dancing on the Vaudeville circuit. After meeting Sophie Tucker she began to tour with her show and that led to television work. When Frank Sinatra saw her perform on Broadway in "A Hole In The Head" he bought the film rights and hired her to reprise her role. She wrote a book called "I Never Wanted to be a Star, and I Wasn't."