A CAT NAMED PIPPIN
Misty and I have had 6 dogs and 1 cat in our life together.
We loved them all.
Pippin was an Orange Tabby.
He was abandoned by his original owner
and became the hobo cat of the neighborhood.
He learned how to beg,
and which homes offered handouts.
He was outdoors in all weather,
and he and I became friends when we met on the streets.
Then, when Misty and I would go for walks,
Pippin would trot along with us.
We took him into our home and he became part of our family.
We loved him.
Pippin could be a block away
and when I called his name he'd run all the way home.
One morning he died on our doorstep,
poisoned by an antifreeze leak from a car.
Life is too damn fragile!
KIRBY STONE
At that time there was a popular vocal/comedy group called The Kirby Stone Four. They were all over network TV and got a Grammy for "Baubles, Bangles and Beads".
Kirby heard about us and was going to book us in a famous NYC hotel lounge for lots of money. We didn't hear from him for a week so I called his number. I was told by his wife that he had just died. We felt sorry for her, and a little bit for us.
Misc. Thoughts
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When I was a young brat a lot of the kids in our neighborhood were getting their adenoids taken out. It was a war to eliminate adenoids from the Earth. I don't think anybody knew what they were, but they wanted them gone.
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Before I got into music full time I worked in a lot of factories, tried selling encyclopedias, dug graves, greased cement mixers, drove a school bus, and did a bunch of other jobs. I had a perfect employment record: I never worked anyplace I could go back to.
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MY INVENTION: A hands-free umbrella for bald guys, with a plunger on the bottom to hold it on the head.
© Jack Blanchard, 2018