The Last Harvest

It was sunny and windy when I awoke this morning. I listened to American Top 40 re runs as I ate breakfast and planned my day. (It was a good one, too, from 1975. Hits from mid-November '75 include Elton John's "Island Girl," KC and the Sunshine Band's "That's the Way I Like It," and my favorite John Denver song, "Calypso.")

The bank was my first stop. Depositing my paycheck was only part of the reason I wanted to get there today. Thanks to their location on the White Horse Pike, across from Oaklyn's City Hall, the tellers at the PNC Bank I frequent are a rich source of information about goings-on in town.

According to the tellers, a man had come in earlier in the week saying that he was laying carpet for the Oaklyn Library. Apparently, that's why it had closed, not anything to do with any police investigation.

On one hand, that does make sense. The Oaklyn Library has been in the midst of remodeling lately. They were painting the interior a few weeks ago. I couldn't organize the kids' books one week because of the painting.

When I talked to the police receptionist on Thursday, though, she called it an "ongoing investigation" and made it sound like the Library would be closed until the investigation closed, too. And I didn't see anyone laying anything when I went over there on Wednesday or Thursday. The building was just dark.

Headed for the Collingswood Farm Market after leaving the bank. Today was the last day of the Farm Market. They always end on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Once again, there were more craft booths than food booths, but I still found plenty of good things to eat. I picked up Brussels sprouts, mushrooms, an organic onion, sweet potatoes, apples, green peppers, cheddar cheese from the dairy farm, a small jar of blueberry butter for a present, broccoli, and bananas and grapefruit from the wholesalers.

Try though I might, I couldn't find a single yard sale today. I rode around Collingswood and Oaklyn for a while before finally giving up and heading home around quarter of 11.

I hadn't planned on being home so early. I was at loose ends until I came up with an idea. I've been wanting to figure out what to do with those recipes I cut out of Prevention Magazine during my vacation in March for ages...and stuffing them in a recipe box just made a disorganized mess. I borrowed an idea from the previous owner of that Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book and pasted the recipes on paper, then hole-punched them and put them in the Sailor Moon binder I found a few years ago. It took me almost two hours to get it all done, but it looked much better when I did.

I ran more Bowery Boys while I worked on my recipe project. Jungle Gents is one of the goofy, slightly bizarre movies they made in the later 50s. As you can guess from the title, it's a spoof of the African adventure stories that were popular in the 40s and 50s. Sach's new sinus pills give him the ability to smell diamonds. Slip once again takes advantage of his friend's new talents and takes him, their friends Chuck and Butch, and Louie the soda shop owner to the African jungles. There, they encounter lions, both friendly and unfriendly natives, a doctor with designs on Sach's "super sniffer"...and a jungle wild woman who has a crush on Sach and isn't taking "no" for an answer!

Headed out for a walk after the Boys ended. It was a nice day for a walk, too, mid-50s, sunny, and windy but not too bad. I hiked down Manor Avenue and over the train tracks to WaWa. Picked up a hot chocolate there, then continued down the White Horse Pike and over to Uncle Ken's. Didn't look like there was anyone at home at their house, so I moved on. Said "hi" to Dolores' granddaughter Mercedes and a friend of hers, then went home.

I spent the rest of the evening inside, cleaning the kitchen and the bathroom. My rule is I don't pull out the Christmas decorations until after Thanksgiving and the entire house is spotless. Since I didn't have anything else planned today, I decided to get some of the cleaning done early. As usual, the bathroom was particularly bad...but I really wanted to get the kitchen spotless, too, in time for holiday baking.

Doing all that scrubbing really tired me out. I made a quick dinner of home-made chicken fingers with cornmeal and whole wheat coating, steamed broccoli, baked sweet potato fries with rosemary, and a baguette slice with farm-market fresh honey.

Ran The Naked Gun during dinner. This classic 1988 comedy is my favorite of the three movies that came in the Laugh Or I'll Shoot! set. Lieutenant Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielson) finds himself investigating a plot to assassinate the visiting Queen of England that his partner (O.J Simpson...yes, that O.J Simpson) uncovered. He's thrown a curveball by the owner of the pier where his partner was found (Ricardo Montalban) and his gorgeous, yet klutzy secretary (Priscilla Prestley) who want him off the mystery for good.

The plot is just a skeleton to hang some great jokes on. Running gags abound, from Drebin's inability to keep a car in working order to people spending more time on their faces than on their feet. This is what my mother used to call an "ouch" movie - slapstick, in its purest form, is all over the place. If you're not a fan of slapstick or the Abrahams/Zucker style of madness, you probably won't get into this. For the rest of us, we can enjoy every moment of that "I Love LA" baseball montage and every explosion, not to mention O.J Simpson getting harmed in various ways long before half the country wanted to do the same.