THE BIG LEMON COOKIE

I read it's quite common for people👥 to be superstitious. And that some even practice routines and habits, believing those rituals will help regulate their daily luck.

I don’t believe in any of those hocus-pocus ideas. After all, I've been creating my own bad luck my entire life. Not once have I needed assistance from a black cat,🐈 a broken mirror, or any tall ladders. 

Practicing routines and habits to influence my luck-of-the-day is, in my mind, a bunch of silly hooey. Except. . . this one little, crazy belief. A misperception from my past. One that just might be considered a. . . superstition. 

 

It was June 1964, back when every June Cleaver in town signed up their kids for Vacation Bible School. VBS was the best gig in town. It was a break for the moms, and a fun getaway for the kids. At VBS, they always served up those big 🍋  lemon cookies, along with a Dixie Cup full of orange Kool-Aide. In those days, getting a cookie treat, every day, for an entire week—now that was a big deal!

During snack break one day, a volunteer teacher explained something, she believed to be, as a very reverent Bible 📖 rule. A rule that my inexperience mind🧒 took on as a crazy superstition: “The Bible is the Holy Word of God," the teacher said, “Never put anything on top of it—it’s very disrespectful to God!” 

 

Hearing that, I about spit out my orange 🟠 Kool-aide, considering I had just set my lemon cookie on top of my Bible. 🤯

 

I quickly jerked it up, and even though I felt spooked, I ate that entire cookie. How soon will the lighting strike? But have no fear, I lived to tell the story. However, after that day, I struggled to put anything on top of my Bible. Not an ink🖋 pen, a cell 📱phone, or even a used tissue. And most definitely not a lemon cookie!! 

 

Perhaps the VBS worker miss-spoke that day, or maybe it was my young nine-year-old brain 🧠, who misperceived the entire message. Either way, placing an object on a Bible became a fearful superstition. 

Eventually I renovated my mind, like renovating a room. Sometimes you just have to update your thoughts. God alone is what I worship, revere, and hold dear to my soul. Not some silly superstition. 

That rule about placing anything on a Bible, was terribly wrong. Holiness is Christ Himself.☦ Not a book with words written on the pages. 

It's okay to set things on top of my Bible. Well. . .maybe not a lemon cookie. Not because it’s wrong, but because I'd much rather eat the cookie, drink my Kool-Aide, and enjoy the moment.💗😀 

Anna J. Wise

Mercy Me

      

 

 

 

                                BEST SEAT IN THE HOUSE

My favorite show growing up in the sixties…well…it’s not that easy.  First of all, I was born in the year 1960, so my memories of television shows were based around 1966 and beyond. Honestly, there are way too many to name. To be fair, I have to list categories. Cartoons, Sitcoms, Dramas, Movies. It’s not a short list! ✍

 

Cartoons. Bugs Bunny,🐰 with his buds, Daffy Duck, Porky 

Pig,🐷 Taz. Sylvester the cat😸 and Tweety Bird, Felix the Cat, Road Runner and Wiley E Coyote. Tom and Jerry,🐭 Chip and Dale, Rocky and Bullwinkle. Have no fear! Underdog is here!  Also, Pepe Le Pew,🦨 Atom Ant, Gigantor, Hercules. 

My sister and I would sing,🎵♪💏 duh nuh, nuh, nuh, nuh, nuh, nuh, nuh, Batman! Batman! Batman! As the caped  crusader with his trusty side kick Robin, protected Gotham City from the evil villains.  Of course, The Flintstones! Yabba, Dabba, Do! and The Jetsons🚀—just to name a few. I don’t think there was a child alive that didn’t have Saturday morning cartoons from the second they woke up, and the minute you threw open the front door after school.🏫

 

Sitcoms. I don’t believe that was a word back then?These weekly shows were based on comedies and dramas, etc. I can’t decide what I enjoyed watching more: The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, or Family Affair? Then there was The Ghost👻 and Mrs. Muir, The Flying Nun, Gidget, Lassie, Hogan’s Heroes and Mc Hales Navy, The Monkees, That Girl, I Dream of Jeannie,🍾 Bewitched. I Love Lucy, 💕 The Jackie Gleason Show. And we can’t forget, Gilligan’s Island, or The Beverly Hillbillies. Come ride the little train that is rolling down the tracks to the junction…Petticoat Junction! Green Acres!🟩 Starring Zza Zza Gabor, dressed in her stunning evening gowns… on her farm. Mr. Ed the talking horse 🐴 shot in black and white.

 

The 60’s were the time of the space wars 😧💥  between the United States and mostly Russia. Naturally, every child watched,👀 Lost in Space, My Favorite Martian,👽The Outer Limits, Space Odyssey, and hid multiple times under a pillow, terrified, viewing,🙈 The Twilight Zone! Back then, it felt like we spent more time dreaming about space than we did about Earth.🌎 I could be a total “Space Cadet,” even, “Spaced out!” Hard to say…

 

Dramas. Bonanza, The Virginian, Gunsmoke, The Rifleman, The Wonderful World of Disney👸where every Sunday featured an entertaining movie🎥 the entire family would sit and watch. Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom documentary of animals🦁 in nature. Least we neglect the sports fans out there; let’s not forget ABC’s Wide World of Sports🏅 where every Saturday we watched the ski jumper⛷ crash in the Sports intro, when Jim McKay proclaimed; the “thrill of victory or the agony of defeat!”

 Movies.  A very tough category. My parents would drop us off for a double feature and most of the time we watched Disney shows while we ate chocolate Flicks, and popcorn.🍿 I remember watching The Love Bug with my cousins. Musicals,🎻 both animated Disney and Cinema productions, were quite popular at the box office. 🎟 My mom bought me the record of Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang. I loved the Jungle Book and The Sound of Music. 🎶 Both of those are classics; even now in 2021! Batman, the Movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Planet of The Apes,🙉 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kids, Born Free…as free as the grass grows, as free as the wind blows…🌬

Too many, really, to name! 

 

The evening dramas were often times viewed with kids and parents eating their TV dinners. My favorite? Salisbury Steak?

 Our television 📺 in the 60’s was about the size of a microwave oven, with “bunny ears” for the antennae 📡 and foil wrapped on the top for “better reception.” The “remote channel changer”📲 was usually the youngest kid…because they had no choice!  And all the episodes were on three networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC! 

 

Like a kaleidoscope 💠 of psychedelic colors, interchanging and mixing together, to form a beautiful pattern of shape and sizes, so too, is exactly why, I canNOT choose 💁 a favorite! Too many to choose from, and I’m sure I’ve missed a top pick or two! 

 

Ahh, those were the days my friend…so tell me…what’s your 

favorite? 

Genevra Bonati

Author: A Halted Heart

 

                      A DANCE TO REMEMBER 

It was Christmas Eve 1962, 🎄 the year my baby brother threw a Christmas package across the room like a frisbee. Wrapped in festive Santa paper, the squared-shaped gift was a dead giveaway---it was a vinyl record. As soon as it hit the ground, the package made an odd clanking sound. My mother  cried out, "Oooh, no!" 😮 She ran over and picked it up. Inside, the broken pieces jingled like loose change. 

 After she carefully removed the wrapping paper, the   cover photo appeared. A new release by Nat King Cole, one of my mother's favorite singers. She never referred to him as Nat or Mr. Cole, it was always his full name: Nat King Cole. 

 My mother brushed her hand over his photo, sighing out, "He has the best bedroom voice of any singer." 💖 That had me baffled. The only voice I'd ever heard in my mother's bedroom was my dad's. 

 

When she slide the record out, it looked like a sandwich, a big bite taken out of one side. Determined to hear the music, my mother placed the damaged record on the turntable and then carefully positioned the needle. That's when I got to hear Mr. Cole sing. 

Don't know how Nat King Cole sounded in the bedroom, but in the living room that night, he was a hit. The music 🎶 made my parents stand up, and after embracing each other, they began to slow dance. When the singer's voice crooned from the speakers---oh my gosh---how it made me smile.

My mother passed away in 2011. Eight years later, my dad joined her. I now see them, as the young couple they were in that living room, dancing in heaven with Nat King Cole, singing to them in person. 💃🕺

 

Anna J. Wise

Author: Mercy Me