Well, the obits were full of celebrities yesterday.
Celebrity Directors
Celebrity Coaches
Celebrity Talk Show hosts, I’m not much of a movie buff and haven’t ever really been into football (except THE BUCKEYES!!!) but talk? I was into talk, still am!
Yesterdays passing of Tom Snyder brought back memories of staying all night at my grandmothers house after my grandfather died and I couldn’t sleep, so I would get up and go into the living room and find my grandmother there working on a crossword puzzle in ink with the TV turned on low with Tom Snyder and his burning cigarette interviewing somebody like John Lennon or some other celeb
while he and his staff took pot shots at one another and only a reading lamp lighting the room. Every once in a while she would ask me to retrieve her dictionary from beneath the coffee table so she could look up a word. She’d take her skinny fingers and follow the words, scratch her head and ponder what her next letter would be and then finally write down in her BEAUTIFUL penmanship the correct word.
Mama, as she was known, was ALWAYS right on her crossword puzzles. She never once had to cross a word out and rewrite an answer, she was just very smart.
She always smelled like BenGay and Ivory soap. When I would fix her a dinner of creamed tuna and peas with instant coffee she acted like it was a fine dining experience.
I lived part time with my grandmother after my grandfather, Papa, passed away when I was in 3rd grade. I still miss him. Oddly, I never realized I missed Mama till I started to write this blog about the passing of Tom Snyder.
Farewell, Tom Snyder and thanks for the walk down memory lane.
She was a wiz when it came to crossword puzzles. I often think about her when I’m struggling with the Friday and Saturday puzzles, always the toughest of the week. She had an amazing vocabulary.
When I consider how much Papa and Mama knew, it amazes me. I loved it when he would recite soliloquies from one of Shakespeare’s plays or various poems. They were both “up” on the news and could put things in historical perspective. Although sometimes they could advance fruity ideas, they were really intelligent.
Left by Mark Daniels on July 31st, 2007