Animation Celebrates the Troops

Started out a sunny but cold Saturday with this week's American Top 40 re-run. We leaped back to Veteran's Day Weekend 1979, as disco, ballads, country tunes, and R&B dominated the charts during the first fall of my life. Hits that weekend included "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" by Michael Jackson, "I'll Never Love This Way Again" by Dionne Warwick, "Good Girls Don't" by The Knack, "You Decorated My Life" by Kenny Rogers, "Please Don't Go" by KC and the Sunshine Band, "Dim All the Lights" by Donna Summer, and "No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)" by Summer and Barbara Streisand.

One of my favorite bands of the 70s hit #1 that week with one of their most iconic tunes, "Heartache Tonight" by the Eagles.

I headed out as soon as Casey signed off. I had a lot to do, and now only had a short time to do it! My first stop was the Logan Presbyterian Church on Merchant Street in Audubon to drop off some donations for their thrift shop. They were really busy when I arrived. I could barely squeeze through the main room with the clothes. I gave the ladies my two bags of items and took a quick look around, but didn't see anything I wanted.

Rode across the White Horse Pike and into the other side of Audubon to check out a yard sale on South Haviland Avenue. No luck there, nor at a smaller sale in Collingswood on Lees Avenue. Yard sale season is winding down here. I probably won't be seeing too many more this year. They usually end when it starts getting cold, or when we get closer to Thanksgiving and people don't have the time to go through their closets for things to sell, whichever comes first.

Went to the farm market after leaving Lees Avenue. The Collingswood Farm Market is winding down for the year, too. They only have two or three weeks left. There were far more craft booths than vegetable booths for the first time today, including the wool yarn booth that always brings live alpacas in the fall. The remaining food booths were far from empty. The fall harvest is at its height. Tables groaned with broccoli, carrots, sweet potatoes, apples, turnips, radishes, leeks, cauliflower, spinach, greens, Brussels sprouts, and cranberries. The carrots were a bit small, probably because of the weather, but I bought them anyway, along with small Empire apples, brown mushrooms, a bag of spinach, three nice little sweet potatoes, cranberries, and a cauliflower that was a far more manageable size than the monsters the Acme's been selling.

When I got home, I had leftovers for an early lunch and watched my annual marathon of wartime cartoon shorts. I started off with the second disc of Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 6, which is almost entirely devoted to war-themed cartoons. While most of the shorts were goofy gag-a-thons, like "Wacky Blackout" and "Meet John Doughboy," the main characters got their licks in, too. Bugs takes down Gobbels in "Herr Meets Hare." Daffy goes up against the entire German Army in "Daffy the Commando." Ducks, geese, and doves recreate how the Axis rose to power in "The Duckinators." Bosko the Talk-Ink Kid gives the Kaiser a lickin' during World War I in "Bosko the Doughboy." A group of mice get wise to a dictatorial cat and find a way to chase him out of the house in "Fifth Column Mouse."

Work wasn't as bad as it could have been. We were busy all day long, but not quite as bad as earlier in the week. Many people may have gone away for the weekend, or had other things going on today. I was in and out with no problems, and even got to shelve some chips and soda.

When I got home, I was too tired and it was too late for the ground turkey meatloaf I'd originally planned for dinner tonight. I opted to make Salisbury Turkey Steaks with roasted turnips and Brussels sprouts instead.

I finished out the Looney Tunes as I ate, then switched to Popeye. Everyone's favorite brawling sailor (and his original animators, the Fleischer Brothers) was so eager to enter World War II, he joined the Armed Services a month before the US even got involved in "The Mighty Navy." Most of his early Fleischer wartime shorts just had him and Bluto fighting for Olive while on leave in "Kicking the Conga Around" and on board ship in "Olive Oyl and Water Don't Mix." A few did get him involved with actual fighting, notably
"Mighty Navy" (done so early, the enemy isn't even named), and "Blunder Below," where he takes out a submarine after being sentenced to work in the boiler room.