Betty Lou Gerson

            On Thursday morning my left arm felt a lot better than it’s been feeling since I wrenched it three weeks ago. 

            I worked out the chords for the second verse of “L'araignée du soir” (The Spider of Night) by Boris Vian. 

            I memorized the first verse of “Paris d’papa” by Serge Gainsbourg and changed the end words of the third and fourth lines. The Sonix transcription app had said one of the words was “d’ombre” but the rhyme scheme calls for a “doo” sound, so I changed it to “d’ou”. 

            I weighed 87.25 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since August 18. 

            Around midday, after shaving and showering, I worked on getting caught up in my journal. 

            I weighed 87 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride and on the way back stopped at Freshco where they still had Canadian cherries and so I got five bags. I also bought three packs of on sale raspberries, some bananas, a box of spoon sized shredded wheat, two packs of Full City Dark coffee, and a pack of eleven lint free microfibre washcloths. There were ten in a pack but there was only one blue pack and a loose blue one that I’d thought had come from that pack and so I stuffed it inside. 

            I weighed 86.45 kilos at 18:15. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 20:03. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Paranoiac Utopia” I continued to edit the video that I shot on August 22. I went through the footage of my trip west on the south sidewalk of Queen and then covered the trip east on the north side from Sorauren to O’Hara. When I stopped for supper there were about 13 minutes left in what was originally a 63 minute video. All that’s left is the rest of my ride east along the north side of Queen and then west through the graffiti alley called the Milky Way. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a chicken leg with Skyr while watching episode 5 of Checkmate.

            Janet Evans, George Mallinson, and Peter Simpson are in an antique shop when George looks outside and sees a man looking in. He recognizes the face as Louis Roche. When Roche sees him he runs with George in pursuit, but Roche gets away in a cab. Peter says he thought Roche was dead but George says “He won’t be alive for long”, leaving his fiancé Janet in shock. After this George breaks off their engagement without an explanation. Janet goes to Checkmate to get them to stop her fiancé from killing Roche. Dr. Hyatt recognizes George’s name because Dr. Mallinson is a renowned Canadian archaeologist who works at San Francisco’s biggest museum. Don and Hyatt go with Janet to talk with George, who denies knowing a man named Roche or wanting to kill him. He explains he simply broke off his engagement with Janet because he realizes he doesn’t love her. She doesn’t believe him and knows he’s just trying to protect her. Don goes to the museum to inquire about George only to find that he recently and suddenly resigned. Don goes back to confront George but he continues to evade any admission about planning on killing Roche. Don says he believes Janet and leaves. Don gets Janet to put together Roche’s features for Hyatt to sketch and he comes up with a portrait she recognizes. Don and Jed take copies of the portrait to various parts of town where a foreigner might go such as hotels and shops. After several dead ends Don finds the proprietor of an antique shop who just sold a China cabinet to Roche but he used the name Jean Charette. She says someone else asked for his address recently as well. Peter also has Roche’s address and number but it’s that of his girlfriend Helen, who says there’s no Roche there. But when Roche hears this he runs for the car. Don arrives, sees Peter with a gun and tries to warn Roche but he drives away, knocking over Don. George learns that Charette has his own antique shop in Los Angeles and heads there with Peter. Jed follows them but they evade him. Don learns Roche’s LA store address from Helen. Jed calls Don from the airport where he figured George and Peter were going when he lost them. He learned that they were on a plane to LA half an hour ago. Don takes the next flight. George and Peter break into Roche’s shop and so does Don. They tell him that Roche was the sadistic commandant of the POW camp where George and Peter were held for years and that he is responsible for the murder of thousands. Don still argues that he must be brought to trial and not killed. Roche arrives and there is a shootout that causes a gasoline leak that eventually bursts into flames. Don is shouting for Roche to jump when the whole place explodes and Roche dies. Janet and George’s engagement is back on. 

            The antique dealer was played by Betty Lou Gerson, who moved with her family from Tennessee to Chicago in the 1930s and became a radio actor at the age of 16 on the First Nighter Program. Then she found bigger radio work in New York and starred in Arnold Grimm’s Daughter, Lonely Women, and played Charlotte Wilson on the radio version of The Guiding Light. She played Glinda in a 1950 radio adaptation of The Wizard of Oz. She was the narrator for the 1950 animated film Cinderella. She was the voice of Cruella De Vil in 101 Dalmations. She co-starred in the movie The Miracle of the Hills. Her last role was providing the voice of Frances for Cats Don’t Dance in 1997.