Under Buttercup Siege

For forty-eight hours now I've been closely surrounded and bombarded by "Build Me Up Buttercup", the 1968 KLMS Top 48 Countdown hit by the Foundations. Every, and I mean every, Saturday I listened to the Top 48 Countdown on my transistor radio, often using the earphone that looked like an ancient hearing aid. When we walked over to the Gateway Mall, we picked up the printed 4.25" x 11" copies of the week's hit list. I studied the list the way my college sons study NCAA basketball brackets. We would blow all our allowance plus our hard-earned babysitting money on an eighty-eight cent 45 rpm of "Penny Lane" or "Georgy Girl". KLMS is an all-sports radio station now, having survived a "New Age" incarnation after its longtime Top 40 format.

So, this ruby Tuesday, I think we're alone now in strawberry fields forever. Something's happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear:

Why do you build me up (Build me up)
buttercup, baby
Just to let me down (Let me down)
and mess me around
And then worst of all (Worst of all)
you never call, baby
When you say you will (Say you will)
but I love you still
I need you (I need you)
more than anyone, darling
You know that I have from the start
So build me up (Build me up)
buttercup, don't break my heart

If you knew that buttercups are a toxic plant for horses you get extra credit and a bag of Montgomery Wards caramel corn.


© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Little Red Rolling Suitcase

Running away from home has kept my wheely luggage very busy this year. It's looking like it had an unpleasant encounter with the Big Bad Wolf at baggage claim on the way to Grandma's house.

A red wheely suitcase is easier to find than a black one at most airports, but not in the Cornhusker state. Half the luggage popping up and riding around the carousel at Omaha's Eppley Airport is red. One of these trips I'm going to pack it so it doesn't flip over on its back like the world's largest Orkin victim.

My very first suitcases all my own were red, too. I got them when I was about twelve for slumber parties, Camp Granada, and going to Grandma's. The teeny one nested inside the small one. Red naugahyde with black zippers. Locks that opened with dimestore diary-sized keys. A Petula Clark or Royal Guardsman LP could barely fit in the small one. Only 45 rpms in the teeny one--Penny Lane, Last Train to Clarksville, Ruby Tuesday, To Sir With Love...

I was still using those red suitcases (or sockcases) even after I was married. They weren't decorated with any registered trademarks of the Monkees or Donny Osmond, thank heaven. I even kept the small one packed with baby clothes, phone numbers, Desitin, and diapers in the car trunk one winter when I thought I might want to run away from my spouse. He wasn't actually physically abusive, but he did drop his used dental floss on the hideous pseudo-cowhide carpet every night. When you are nursing a colicky infant and sniffing Desitin twenty hours a day your tolerance for icky dental floss is mighty low!



'Lil Red Riding Hood' lyrics by UNKNOWN:

*howls*
Who's that I see walkin' in these woods?
Why it's Little Red Ridin' Hood
Hey there Little Red Riding Hood
You sure are lookin' good
You're everything a big bad wolf could want
Listen to me, Little Red Ridin' Hood
I don't think little big girls should
Go walkin' in these spooky old woods alone

Graph paper

Al Gore's charts must have clicked in on my long-submerged fondness for graph paper. It had been many, many months since I checked in on Blog$hares, the fantasy blog stock market. I've never spent enough time with the game to understand it, but it was mildly upsetting to find my blog had been the subject of a hostile takeover. That sounds like a bad thing. Feels a bit like the time someone swiped my bike out of the open garage.

To be honest, everything I know about stocks I learned in Mr. Troester's eighth grade American Studies class in the spring of 1969. Mike Troester was a wonderful, kind, funny, inspiring teacher, who did not need to be the object of cult-worship or a fan club. It wasn't about personality or ego for him. He just liked history and teaching junior high kids. I was pleased to find the Lincoln Public School System honors outstanding educators with a Mike Troester Spirit of Teaching Award these days.

Mr. Troester knew that junior high girls tended to graph their fantasy NYSE stocks* with turquoise ink or magenta felt pens, and accented the graphs with sea-green Hi-Liters. He knew we would doodle during the filmstrips, but he also knew we could learn about the experience of the French in Indochina. Can you say Dien Bien Phu? I wish that Dubya could, too.

* My fantasy stocks were ITT, Pepsi, and Western Union. Good grief! I think I "bought" Western Union stock because of the song by the Five Americans. The lyrics were catchy:

da-da-da-da-da da-da-da-da-da
da-da-da-da-da da-da-da-da-da
da-da-da-da-da da-da-da-da-da
da-da-da-da-da da-da-da-da-da

Sad, but that might be a better justification than for most purchases in my life. (Except for the Petula Clark 45s!).

I Meant to Do My Work Today

but Al Gore's Web got in my way...

I've got a song in my head, but the tune in my mind is "I've Got the World On a String". It only took me two searches to figure out that "I've got a song in my head" is not one of the verses to that song. Not bad, really. Under three minutes.

Another two searches to find the poem that doesn't go, "I didn't do my work today..." Another five minutes.

The reason I didn't do my work today was that the song in my head was the theme from "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly". Admit it. Can't you already hear the opening strings and the vague grunting chant? What is it they are grunting? There must be lyrics somewhere. There must be lyrics, and I must find them, if only to save other poor unfortunates from having this song stuck in their head with no relief. I will spare no effort, leave no Google unchurned!

I first heard the theme in 1967 over the earphone of my transistor radio tuned to the Top Forty-Nine countdown on KLMS. Then a skinny kid named Randy brought his 45 to church, and we played it on the Sunday School gray institutional phonograph. Eventually it became one of the two unofficial theme songs of my junior high youth group, the other being Cream's "Sunshine of Your Love". I know, I know. Not exactly "Onward Christian Soldiers", but there you have it.

I remember being confused in 1967, and thinking that Sergio Mendes and Brasil 66 had something to do with "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly". We were just learning about South America, and the music sounds strange enough to derive from some lost tribe up the Amazon. But why were they singing, "Uh wonko, Waco"? What did it mean in their language? Why didn't Sergio Mendes change the name to Brasil 67? Why didn't he spell it with a "z"? And why was the movie in the Sergio Leone Mountains in California?

In 1967 we had the World Almanac, a Webster's Collegiate Dictionary and the encyclopedia set from the Safeway grocery store. All other research involved going to a public library. Enquiring minds did not feel it was a black mark on their Googling skills if they couldn't find the lyrics to the song, if the grunts could actually be called lyrics. Enquiring minds needed to finish their math homework so they could go babysit the neighbor kids for thirty-five cents an hour. If they survived three hours of that they could walk to the mall on Saturday to buy a 45 rpm record after they finished digging dandelions and listening to the KLMS countdown.

The Webster's was useful when Mom told us we were being "obnoxious and belligerent". We shaped up a bit, but knew she really loved us. It was vacuuming my brother's room that shortened her patience with us.

Sometime between "obnoxious" and "obstinate", my research obsession got out of control. The subject matter was never a cure for cancer or world peace. It was usually identifying butterflies, locating word derivations, or finding pop culture trivia. What exactly did Al Haig say when Reagan was shot?*

When my spouse told me I was being "obstinate and recalcitrant" on a vacation, I knew he didn't really love me, and I wasn't crazy about him anymore, either. No vacuuming was involved. The vacation was already hitting bottom with one son needing stitches, and now I didn't even have a dictionary. It's probably best I didn't have one, or I would have bonked him over the head with it and said, "Uh wonka, Waco!"

And so, I meant to do my work today, but I spent over an hour on an unsuccessful search for the meaning and correct spelling of "Uh wonka, Waco!" I learned that Ennio Morricone composed the soundtracks for Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Westerns. As far as the lyrics, I did not pass Go, and I did not collect a fistful of dollars.

I Meant to Do My Work Today
by Richard LeGalliene
I meant to do my work today,
But a brown bird sang in the apple tree
And a rainbow held out its shiny hand—
So what could I do, but laugh and go?

I never did see the Clint Eastwood Spaghetti Westerns. Mom wouldn't have approved, vacuuming or not. I did see one really strange Sam Peckinpah movie in college about bringing the pasta Alfredo or something. And what was the name of that boyfriend???

I'm exhausted, and the condo is still a mess. I feel like I've been trapped in Tom Robbin's Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates. You're just going to have to track that down by yourself!

*This is a freebie: "As of now, I am in control here in the White House." (3/30/81)

Coo Coo Ca-Choo

Last Sunday Dave Barry wrote about that tasty paste we ate in kindergarten and at Sunday School. Robert Fulghum explained that all we really need to know we learned in kindergarten. Today I'm laughing about the equally important things I learned babysitting.

In sixth grade in 1966 I discovered pop music. I moved beyond my red crystal radio kit to a little transistor radio in its vinyl case. Every Saturday afternoon I would listen to the top 49 countdown on KLMS, 1490 AM with my earphone that looked like my grandmother's hearing aid. I could listen while I dug dandelions in the front yard. Any time we complained of boredom, my mom told us we could chose whether to darn our socks or to dig dandelions. That was excellent incentive to learn to entertain ourselves. [Imagine that! We didn't even have a VCR in the backseat of the Chevy. Heck, we had just gotten seatbelts.] And, thank heaven I had a mom with a constructive cure for boredom!

Cue the memory soundtrack:

• Georgy Girl
• To Sir With Love
• What's It All About, Alfie
• Penny Lane
• Ruby Tuesday
• I'm a Believer
• Don't Sleep in the Subway
• I Dig Rock and Roll Music
• I Think We're Alone Now
• Feeling Groovy

I bought 45s for eighty-eight cents in Kresges at the only mall in town. My allowance for four weeks was enough to buy a 45. I put those plastic swirly adaptors in the record centers so I could play them on our hi-fi. I wore Yardley white lip gloss and blue eye shadow, and read both Sixteen and Seventeen magazines. My PaperMate pen was designed by Marimekko, and I was introduced to pizza and Doritos.

The next year I started babysitting for a couple with two daughters during all the Cornhusker home games and the chamber music concerts. This is significant in that

1. I began developing my skills entertaining and educating kids which have served me well as a mom and art teacher
2. I was introduced to the lifestyle of a more affluent socio-economic group
3. I was the beneficiary of football tickets when they couldn't attend
4. They convinced my mom that I was old enough to see Franco Zefferelli's beautiful Romeo and Juliet
5. I developed the ability, now long lost, to visualize the action of a football game from the radio announcer's descriptions
6. I was paid a whopping seventy-five cents an hour, when most of my other "clients" paid thirty-five or fifty cents
7. I had the opportunity to read their copy of The Graduate, or I might still not have a clue what sex is.

Slow down. You move too fast. Got to make the morning last.