In the Good Old Summertime

After my long trip yesterday, I spent most of the morning sleeping in. When I finally did make it out around 11:30, I couldn't believe how beautiful it was. The sky was brilliant blue, without a hint of haze. The breeze was soft. The clouds were large, but not threatening. It was warm, probably into the lower-mid 80s, but without the humidity that made last week so unbearable.

Since I was out of town all day yesterday, I had a lot to do today. First on the list was volunteering at the Oaklyn Library. They were in the midst of their Lego Club for kids. I dodged little ones playing games on the computer and building elaborate skyscrapers and spaceships with Legos and shelved kids' books. The Oaklyn Library has a more random assortment of DVDs than Haddon Township, probably due to their relying heavily on donations. They'd apparently just gotten in a Universal 100th Anniversary set honoring classic comedies. (The set was so new, someone forgot to take the plastic off!) Actually, the movies were really two Universal comedies (the Abbott and Costello vehicle Buck Privates and the screwball favorite My Man Godfrey) and two Paramount comedies now owned by Universal (Duck Soup and Road to Morocco). They also had two TCM collections featuring Judy Garland. I went with the solo set that included The Harvey Girls, For Me and My Gal, In the Good Old Summertime, and Summer Stock.

I rode straight over to the Haddon Township Library after leaving Oaklyn. They were just as busy with people coming out of lunch and into the library to pick up movies and books. I organized the kids' and adult DVDs, clearing titles in the wrong place from both sets of shelves. I went with two sets of cartoons from some old favorites of mine, the most recent adventures for Litttle Einsteins and The Cat In the Hat Knows A Lot About That. Also found a cookbook that featured recipes that exclusively used such New Jersey produce as corn, tomatoes, peaches, and blueberries.

Had lunch at the Crystal Lake Diner, which is on the cliff side under the Haddon Township Library. I didn't have a lot of money after my trip and limited it to fruit salad, scrambled eggs, and whole wheat toast. It was 2:30 by that point, and except for two other elderly folks enjoying quiet late lunches, the Diner was deserted.

My next stop was the Westmont Acme for a very small grocery shopping trip. I normally shop at the Audubon Acme because I work there, but I didn't feel like swinging half-way across the area. The Westmont Acme is a somewhat smaller store in the same shopping center that once had the now-empty Dollar General. While they do have some things I can't find in Audubon (notably the Pilsbury Quick Bread mixes) and their service is very friendly, they were missing other things that I needed (like Acme's cheap small bag of brown rice), and their prices aren't as good. I bought canned low-salt tomato sauce (to replace what I used last week), whole wheat flour, salmon packs (the Acme didn't have them last week), butter, and things to make a pudding pie for Dad. I didn't really need cheese, but the Acme was having a great sale; got an 8 ounce block of Sharp Cheddar for $1.49.

I rode home through a busy and gorgeous Newton River Park. An elderly couple walked their cute, small, fuzzy dog. A mother bounced her tiny baby on her knee. Mother and son passed by me on bikes. A dad and his daughter and son fished on the bridge between the Haddon Township and Oaklyn sections of the park. Canadian geese poked around for a snack and stayed out of harm's way.

Spent the rest of the afternoon inside, taking advantage of the cooler temperatures to do my first baking in ages. I made Blueberry-Chocolate Chip Softbake Cookies and Peach Crisp (the latter from the Garden State cookbook). Ran The Harvey Girls as I baked. Garland plays a young woman from Ohio who is looking for adventure and answers an ad for a mail order bride in New Mexico. Her prospective groom (Chill Willis) turns out to be a sweet but grizzled older cowboy who doesn't know what to make of her. They break off things amiably, and Garland joins the clean-scrubbed waitresses for the Harvey House, a chain of restaurants that popped up along with the railroads in small western towns. The saloon across the street isn't crazy about the competition, including it's owner (John Hodiak) and lead singer (Angela Landsbury). Who will ultimately win the rivalry for the town's best eatery...and to tame the west?

I saw part of this on TCM in college; tried to tape it then, but the tape got cut off. Though she's surrounded by a good supporting cast (including Ray Bolger, who gets a great solo in the "Swing Your Partner" number), this is Garland's show, and she runs with it. My favorite part is Garland's attempt to get the steaks swiped from the Harvey House back by "holding up" the saloon. The cat fight that erupts between Landbury's girls and the waitresses is also worth watching. There's the epic opening number, too - "On the Atcheson, Topeka, and the Santa Fe" won an Oscar for a reason.

Two big problems slow this one down. First of all, Hodiak isn't much of a musical leading man. He's stiff and dull next to a luminous Garland. (It doesn't help that MGM cut their only duet, "My Intuition.") Second, Landsbury is really too sympathetic to be seen as a villain or a threat to Garland, no matter how much MGM tries to play up her bad-girl side.

If you're a Garland fan, jump right in - this is one of her best solo vehicles. Fans of Landsbury or big MGM musicals may want to give this one a watch on TCM before they buy.

Switched to the Little Einsteins as I made Chicken in Orange-Marsala Sauce and Cucumber-Tomato Salad for dinner. The quartet take some unusual adventures, one of which has them shrunk and chasing after part of the machine that got them that way. Another gives their vehicle Rocket the powers of various bugs as they search for the house for their creepy-crawly friends that's been blown away by the Big Bad Wolf. My favorite episodes had musician Quincy and the others rescuing a baby "Piccalo-dactyl" from an exploding Andy Warhol volcano.