ART, JERRRY CLOWER HUMOR STORY, INSPIRATION, RIDDLE, QUICK QUESTION, TRIVIA, SANDWICH RECIPE FOR GRILLED CHEESE ON RAISIN BREAD
Wednesday greetings, all!
Super fabulous read today, beginning with:
QUICK QUESTION
Smartest person I know? Can’t nail one specific person down right this second. But I’m thinking. You?
POP QUIZ + FASCINATING STUFF
Loads me up feeling smarter and more interesting. Thanks to Leslie Elman.
JERRY CLOWER (!)
I love Jerry Clower’s down-home southern humor. Always have and always will. Enjoy “Play Pretties” in today’s episode. It’s a hoot!
RECIPE
Grilled cheddar cheese + Bacon — on raisin bread. Fantastic trio. As far as what spread to put on the bread – I choose just straight up butter or mayo + fresh cracked pepper.
TRACY BECKERMAN’S COLUMN
“To All the Jeans I’ve Loved Before” is absolute tongue-in-cheek grins.
THANKS FOR SLIDING BY TODAY
And giving us a piece of your day + thoughts + love.
xo
AND (!)
5 for FRIDAY is just 2 days away! Stephanie’s Chic on the Cheap’s column is one you won’t wanna miss + introducing a very talented cartoonist we just added to Daymaker Readable Art – who goes by the name of Rube – and a recipe involving … well, can’t tell – you just gotta check in and check it out.
Ready? Set?
Here we go.
POP QUIZ
- FROM 1952 TO TODAY, WHICH COMPANY HAS WON THE MOST NASCAR MANUFACTURERS CHAMPIONSHIPS?
a) Chevrolet
b) Ferrari
c) Ford
d) Toyota - WHICH CREATURE TRANSMITS TRYPANOSOMIASIS, OR SLEEPING SICKNESS, TO HUMANS?
a) Bat
b) Cobra
c) Rat
d) Tsetse fly - A RECOGNIZED FORM OF THE CARD GAME BRIDGE IS NAMED FOR WHICH U.S. CITY?
a) Albuquerque
b) Boston
c) Chicago
d) Sacramento
QUICK QUESTION
WHO IS THE SMARTEST PERSON YOU EVER MET?
POP QUIZ ANSWERS
- From 1952 to today, Chevrolet has won the most NASCAR manufacturers Championship.
- Tsetse flies transmit trypanosomisis, or sleeping sickness, to humans.
- Chicago is a recognized form of the card game bridge.
~ COPYRIGHT 2024 LESLIE ELMAN
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
PLAY PRETTIES
BY JERRY CLOWER
When I was a boy we didn’t have no toys. We called ’em play pretties. The most affluent youngun was the one that had the most empty Prince Albert tobacco cans.
I’ve rolled an old casing — folks call ’em tires now — a thousand miles down the dirt road. Sometimes we’d get up in it, hunker down, put our head up there, scrunch down it it, and roll down the hill. Sometimes you’d beat the tire to the bottom of the hill!
Me and Marcel Ledbetter went hunting us an old car tire one day. We went up to an old junk yard. The man running it, he wasn’t too bright. He’d spent three terms in the third grade — Hoover, Truman and Roosevelt. But we thought he’d give us a used tire if he had one. We got to looking and we saw an A-model roadster. “Looka there! Man, ain’t that a pretty thing!”
He said, “Ain’t no account. We done took all the parts off of it we can use. Ain’t even no motor in it. If y’all can get them old tires patched up and push it out of here, I’ll give it to you.”
Me and Marcel pushed that sucker to my house, put it between the smokehouse and a big old fig tree. We’d sit out there in it and we’d “play-like,” we’d drive down to New Orleans, come back through Slidell, and sometimes we’d come up the other highway through Columbia and Hattiesburg. Ah, we was “good roading it” in our Model A roadster.
One day we decided we’d push it out there on Highway 24. Marcel was driving. We was on the gravel road, just sitting there, but we were “Playing like.” We was just south of Chicago when the road grader come along. Mr. Conway on the road grader jumped off, and said, “Boys, what’s the matter? Your car won’t crank?”
Marcel said, “Naw, sir, it won’t crank.”
He said, “Well, let me see if my bumper on this road grader matches, and I’ll give you a push.”
“We sure would appreciate it if you would push us.”
Well, the bumper just happened to match. I didn’t care if it had been a foot off. He eased up and I jumped in the car, and he got up just as fast as that road grader would go. We went about a quarter of a mile. He stopped and jumped off, and said, “What happened?”
Marcel said, “It didn’t hit a lick.”
The man said, “Well, I didn’t push you fast enough.” He flagged down one of them highway trucks. He sad, “Look, we fixing to get into the Amite County river bottom now. This river bottom is about three miles across here and kinda flat. Get them boys up to about forty-five to fifty-five miles an hour and that thing’ll crank.”
Well, man we got going, rolling up the dust, and Marcel was doing it! He was steering, having a good time. Stopped after about three miles and the man got out of the truck and said, “Did it crank?”
Marcel said, “Naw, sir, didn’t hit a lick.”
The man said, “We got to figure out another way to crank it.”
Marcel said, “It’ ain’t gonna crank.”
The man said, “What do you mean, it ain’t gonna crank?”
Marcel said, “It ain’t got no motor in it.”
COPYRIGHT 1992 JERRY CLOWER
STORIES FROM HOME
“PLAY PRETTIES” STORY IS REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION FROM UNIVERSITY PRESS OF MISSISSIPPI
TO SUCCEED IN LIFE, YOU NEED THREE THINGS:
A WISHBONE, A BACKBONE AND A FUNNY BONE.
~ REBA McENTIRE ~
DO YOU REMEMBER
SLINKY?
nothing to wind …
nothing to wear out!
RIDDLE ME THIS
I AM AN ODD NUMBER.
TAKE AWAY A LETTER AND I BECOME EVEN.
WHAT NUMBER AM I?
GRILLED CHEDDAR AND BACON ON RAISIN BREAD
GRILLED CHEDDAR AND BACON
ON RAISIN BREAD
A Trifecta combo from my great-Aunt Beth who was a super classy lady who knew how to create in the kitchen a little-little something special — at lunchtime – and glamorous presentations entertaining guests at their home for dinner time.
This sandwich is so easy-peasy and outside-the-lunchbox. MAKES 4 SANDWICHES
HERE’S HOW IT’S ASSEMBLED
- 3-6 TBSP butter, softened
- 8 slices raisin bread
- 1/2 pound thinly sliced extra-sharp Cheddar
- 8 thick bacon slices, cooked until crisp and drained on paper towels
NEXT
Butter one side of each slice of raisin bread on a large sheet of wax paper and turn slices over.
Arrange Cheddar on unbuttered sides of bread and add the cooked, crisp bacon.
NOW
Flip remaining “topper” piece of bread on top of sandwiches.
HEAT A NONSTICK SKILLET OVER MODERATE HEAT – as in medium-high
Cook sandwiches in batches, if needed, pressing lightly with a metal spatula, until undersides are golden — about 1-3 minutes. Turn sandwiches over and cook, pressing lightly, until undersides are golden and cheese is melted — about 1-2 more minutes.
REMOVE FROM SKILLET
SERVE WITH A PERFECT COMPANION
A handful of chips or fresh chunks of pineapple – or – best yet (!) little bit of both.
RIDDLE ANSWER
SEVEN
LOST IN SUBURBIA
TO ALL THE JEANS I’VE LOVED BEFORE
BY TRACY BECKERMAN
Since I work from home, I don’t generally get dressed up for the occasion. Most of the time, I consider it a successful day if I change out of my bathrobe and put on my actual clothes. Because of this, I don’t have a lot of fancy clothes and most of what I do have can easily be thrown in the wash.
This arrangement has always worked out fine until the day I bought a pair of “nice” jeans. These uber-high-end jeans fit great but were clearly spun from gold denim, if the cost was any indication. Even though the label said they could be washed in the laundry, I was concerned I might accidentally shrink them, spill bleach on them or wreak some other kind of irreparable havoc on them. Not that I’ve ever done that before. OK, once. Or many six times. But definitely not more than 29.
Anyway, knowing I am laundry-challenged, I decided the safest thing to do would to have the pants dry-cleaned. I figured people who clean clothes for a living must be better at it than I am, or at the very least, their clean-to-ruin ration would be better than mine. Plus, having used the same dry cleaners for a while, I was confident they would take good care of my new, expensive jeans so they lasted a long, long time and I could justify having spent so much on a stupid pair of pants.
In my defense, these were no ordinary jeans. In my long career as a fickle jeans consumer, I have probably tried on and rejected more skinny jeans, flares, boyfriend jeans and straight legs than an Instagram influencer. Between the super low ones that leave me with the world’s worst muffin top to the high-waisted mom jeans that make my butt look so big it should be designated the 51st state of the Union, I have searched high and low for great-fitting jeans. So, when I finally found a pair that actually flattered my lower half, I was willing to pay whatever the price to rein in the UFO (Unidentified Formidably sized Object) that rides behind me.
Confident in my jean-saving strategy, I had my nice jeans dry-cleaned and brought them home and ripped them out of the plastic bag to try them back on. But as I went to pull them up, I realized something was amiss. I got them on my legs and over my knees, but once I got to my thighs, it was clear the jeans were not going any further. I was pretty sure I had not gained 10 pounds overnight, although that has happened in the past, so I figured it had to be the jeans.
“I don’t understand,” I wailed to my husband as I stood in the bedroom with my jeans at half-mast. “I had these dry-cleaned. They’re not supposed to shrink when you get them dry-cleaned.”
“They must have laundered them instead,” he said.
“I definitely told them dry-clean, not laundry!” I protested.
“They must have gotten your instructions wrong,” he replied.
I grabbed the hanger and read the dry-cleaning ticket. Then I peeled the pants off and stared at them accusingly. With a sudden realization I peered at the jeans label.
“Actually, they got it half-right,” I said shaking my head. “They were definitely dry-cleaned … “But they’re not my jeans.”
~ Tracy Beckerman is the author of the Amazon Bestseller, “Barking at the Moon: A Story of Life, Love, and Kibble.
You can visit her at www.tracybeckerman.com
COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM
FASCINATING STUFF
FASCINATING STUFF
- Vermont takes its name from the French “verts monts” or “monts verts,” meaning Green Mountains. Our 14th state nearly had another name, though. For about six months in 1777, while trying to break free from land claims by New York and New Hampshire, the territory put forth a proposal for independence as the colony of New Connecticut.
- The portrait of writer Gertrude Stein by Pablo Picasso, now in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, was completed in 1906. Stein claimed she sat for the artist on 80, maybe even 100 occasions over the course of a year before the work was completed, although much of that time probably was spent chatting in Picasso’s Paris studio. In the end, Picasso changed his realistic depiction of Stein’s face to a Cubist representation that he could have painted without her sitting for him at all.
- Not all peacocks have brilliantly colored feathers; some have a splendid train of feathers that are snowy white. That natural variation is due to a condition called leucism, which results in a lack of pigment in the feathers — and only the feathers. Albino birds, which are even less common, lack pigment in their eyes and skin as well.
- The first woman to compete in a NASCAR race was Sara Christian, who drove a Ford owned by her husband Frank at Charlotte Speedway on June 19, 1949. At the end of the 1949 race season, Sara Christian was ranked No.13 overall. She raced in six of eight NASCAR events, including the July 10 race at Daytona Beach where the field also included Ethel Mobley and Louise Smith — the first NASCAR race that included three female drivers.
- On Mercury, the planet closest to the sun, the sunny side temperatures typically hits 800 degrees Fahrenheit. But little Mercury is a planet of extremes. With no atmosphere to retain heat, temperatures on the dark side of the planet plunge to -290 degrees. At the poles, which remain perpetually in shadow, space probes have found evidence of water ice.
~ COPYRIGHT 2024 LESLIE ELMAN
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
Love the Artwork!
Right on!
I do, too.
Thanks so much and happy day wishes to ya.
I never would have thought of using raisin bread for a grilled cheese sandwich, but you can bet I’m gonna try it!!!
Loved the funnies – cartoons and articles – and the artwork.
The smartest person I know has to be a man I worked many years for. He was a true visionary. He could dissect even the most complicated situation and come up with solutions that were win-win for everyone. He was more generous than anyone I’ve ever met. I am so fortunate to know him.
Hola Carol –
I know, I shared the same thought when I first looked at that grilled cheese sandwiched on RAISIN BREAD. However, I took a leap of faith and took a bite and WOW it was delish.
And your memory of the true visionary man you worked for. What the world needs is more people like this man you write of – “win-win for everyone” love it!
Thank ya kindly for sharing + caring. We are grateful.
Happy day
I love RAISIN toast, especially with peanut butter plus I love grilled cheese sandwiches. However, not once did I think of putting the two together. Ok, OK, I’m going to try it with confidence it will be delicious. As for Daymaker’s question of the smartest person I’ve met, that’s a bit tougher as I always think in terms of CREATIVE people. Creative people are often born that way but to me there’s a bigger population that comes from those who love “messing around”: with things of interest and then BOOM, out comes an endless flow of creativity.
You’re gonna love the raisin grilled cheese, Marty, especially since you’re a fan of Raisin toast already.
Most interesting regarding creative people who love “messing around” with a task at hand … and problem solved.
Much like Carol’s comment recalling the man she worked for who was a solution finder of win-win for everyone.
Thanks for reading + sharing. Grateful.