"The Rest Of The Story"
Some of my column ideas come from emails,
especially my responses, because they cause me to think.
Here are some of them.
A correspondent said an old photograph was authentic,
because it was dated with ballpoint pen writing.
I said:
"You can't argue with ballpoint pen notations.
It was probably an early BIC.
They were popular then, along with anything containing chlorophyll."
Somebody said that our home town was named Buffalo,
because a slick Indian trader sold a deceased horse to a dumb paleface.
I said "That's nice. It was named after a dead horse,
that was passed off as a fresh-killed Buffalo."
There are a number of guesses as to how Buffalo got its name.
This is probably the one I would tell my friends,
because it's the nicest sounding...
"Beautuful river" is "beau fleuve" in French.
In a conversation about telephones I said:
"When I was little my grandparents had a four-party line,
and a candlestick telephone phone, with a separate receiver.
You could tell if eavesdroppers were listening to your conversation
because the volume level dropped a little when they picked up.
You could then place the receiver against the microphone,
and screaming feedback would deafen the jerks.
You can't do that with the new phones,
and they call it progress."
The subject was chickens.
I asked Misty if chickens hum.
She immediately said this:
'Yes. Old Negro spirituals like 'Swing Low Sweet Chariot'."
About our song "The Legendary Chickenfairy I wrote...
"We got off a plane in Washington DC,
where we were going to do a show at Kennedy Center,
and people at the airport and at the hotels were wearing big yellow buttons
that read: 'I BELIEVE IN THE CHICKENFAIRY'.
Apparently somebody in the promotion department had a cute idea."
In California, radion stations were picketed by a group called
"The Gay Activists Alliance".
They actually got the song banned from a couple of stations.
Too bad they read negativity into our perfectly innocent song.
I was thinking along the lines of the Tooth Fairy when I wrote it.
Chickens always spell fun."
About our earlier career trials, I said:
"Our very first record was a pop instrumental I wrote titled 'Gemini'.
It was getting good airplay, when The Ventures covered it note for note.
It was way too close to our arrangement,
but ours was better.
Of course, they got the airplay, and killed ours.
Then they called us and wanted the publishing...all of it.
We refused and they flipped the single over.
The other side was 'La Bamba'."
Did you know that Paul Harvey had a TV show?
The problems were these:
1. He didn't look like you expected him to.
and 2. His gestures and body movements were sort of eccentric.
After all he's a radio guy.
It looked like the ballet news.
And now you know the rest of the story........................
Good day.
Copyright © October 31, 2006 Jack Blanchard. All rights reserved.
Reprinted by permission.
