Rushed Harvest

Started out a still cloudy, windy, and cool morning with the American Top 40. We jumped back a year to mid-summer 1978 as disco and R&B continued its dominance of the charts. Among that week's hits were "Copacabana" by Barry Manilow, the title song from Grease by a solo Frankie Valli, "Take a Chance On Me" by ABBA, "Runaway" by Jefferson Starship, "Love Will Find a Way" by Pablo Cruze, "Three Times a Lady" by the Commodores, "Hot Blooded" by Foreigner, "Last Dance" by Donna Summer, "Life Is Good" by Joe Walsh, and and an early Bonnie Tyler hit, "It's a Heartache."

Andy Gibb briefly left his brothers to enjoy his own solo career apart from the Bee Gees. One of his solo songs, "Shadow Dancing," was in the number one spot that week.

Alas, my farm market run had to be quick today. My shift was at 11AM. I hurried to the Collingswood Farm Market as soon as "Shadow Dancing" was on the air. The Market was packed elbow-to-elbow at quarter after 9. The summer harvest is at it's height, and everything looks so nice. Okra, onions, and potatoes of all sorts are out now. I finally grabbed honey, two tomatoes, small sweet potatoes, a small lavender-streaked eggplant, Chinese string beans, a zucchini, peaches and tiny yellow apples from the orchard booth, and a cucumber and the cutest little honeydew melon from the organic booth. Treated myself to some chocolate chip cookies, too. I figured I'd need the energy later.

I went home, put everything away, made lunch, changed into my work shirt, and headed out again to the Acme. Work was on-and-off busy for most of the day. It was busier than last week, but not quite as bad as it could have been. For one thing, some people are still on vacation, or just coming back from vacation. For another thing, we had a lot more help than we did yesterday or for most of the week. Other than some annoying customers, there were no major problems, and my relief was on time.

When I got home, I changed into regular clothes, then finished A Summer Place while making Blueberry Softbake Cookies. I switched to dubbing Shadow of the Thin Man while sauteeing some of those summer vegetables to go with salmon and leftover sweet potatoes for dinner.

The fifth entry in the Thin Man series pushes Nick and Nora into the world of sports betting. Nick becomes involved in a jockey's murder after it's discovered the jockey was going to testify against a huge sports gambling syndicate. When a reporter's also killed and his rival is blamed, Nick believes the young man to be innocent. He and Nora search for clues to find out what the reporter discovered...and how it relates to the syndicate.

Really cute series entry, better than Goes Home. We meet Nick Jr. for the first time here. Nick Sr. has some odd ideas about child rearing - his idea of fairy tales is reading his son the racing forms. The kid's a chip off the old block, though. He manages to force his ever-drunk pop to drink a glass of milk and get on a merry-go-round. Also loved how Asta managed to start a bar brawl. (Only in this series would a dog be responsible for initiating a fist fight in a restaurant.) Donna Reed is the ingenue, but she doesn't really add that much to the proceedings.