Dear Blog Reader
I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. Yes, it is
that time of the year again. Those dog days of summer passing. It has changed
through the years. Rather than spending these hazy, lazy, days at the pool or
the shade, we have shipped our young charges off to the big air conditioned
schoolhouse. I am thinking of introducing legislation to move Labor Day up to
the first Monday in August. If you can’t beat them then join them. Declare summer over with a three day weekend and bring on the learnin.
The other big annual event is the annual limerick contest.
Yes this is the third year since the Lovely Miss Beverly came up with the great
idea of challenging all of the family and friends, and assorted outlaws within
earshot on facebook to put on their literary hats and put together their five
lines of rhythm and rhyme in memory of Doyle who loved a good limerick. While
the memories of those rhymes were released to the winds as they were spoken,
the legacy lives on in the talented musings of his offspring and those who have
tagged along over the years. Any contest that produces two shout outs to maggots
and turds is an American treasure that will be continuing for many years to come.
If you want to read all of the limericks, they will be posted on the blog in a
few minutes. It is a challenge to pull items from a Facebook feed and put them
on the blog. We think that they are all there.
A big thank you to all participants in this year's limerick
contest. We had over 40 entries written
about food and family, the 2015 theme. We've been deliberating for a couple of
weeks now, hoping someone might stoop to bribery--perhaps sweetening the deal
for the judges by sending a real food sample mentioned in your clever entries.
No grease stained packages or grease stained $100 bills arrived, however, so we
read them all aloud on our drive to a late summer bike ride in Brown County.
The Lovely Miss Beverly helps me narrow the field. She reads
them and we agree on a rating for each from 1-5 in four categories: rhythm,
rhyme, theme, and emotional appeal. Sometimes the categories overlap, like when
the rhyme of "ache" with "4H" caused a pang of angst for Roger,
whose childhood issues with that organization have been well chronicled in
previous posts. So in that case the rhyme multiplied the emotional appeal.
Subjective, I know, but absent bribes, we're gonna feel what we feel.
Food has some powerful connections to our hearts, as
mentioned by you all: fear of the dreaded rooster, disappointment of a failed
holiday pie, love delivered with cake, sibling rivalry (Cyndi Rae--have you
scheduled sessions with a counselor yet?), and the sweet joy of a first taste
of sweet snap peas, or wild black raspberries. So the emotional appeal ratings
were almost all 4's and 5's.
We had some stellar rhymes this year too. From
"rookie" limerick writer Garrett who only wants a "cookie"
(adorable) to the delightfully fun near rhyme "burger" with
"merger" in a limerick about food and marriage by Bonnie. When Bev
heard the word "couch" in Patty's entry about Sunday night popcorn,
she knew the rhyme would be "ouch". Another nice emotional “punch”.
If we had a category for "most mouth-watering" it
would have been impossible to choose a winner. Here are some highlights:
*Chris' Reviving Pie (bonus emotional points from Roger for
mentioning cycling AND bonus from Bev for mentioning pie)
*Charlie's cold milk straight from the tank*Bill's limerick that made us all want to scream for ice cream without actually using the phrase "ice cream"
*Jim's garden tomatoes
*Paula's snowball cookies
*Bonnie's warm cinnamon rolls during a blizzard and oodles of noodles made by those mysteriously skinny aunts. . .
..... all make us wonder at the connection between good eating and creativity.
Thanks for the glimpses into the windows of your kitchens
and relationships. Bev's ratings were certainly skewed towards any favorable
mention of an Auntie's cooking skills (see Kim's entry re: honey twist bread
and Amy's pie mention in her plea for an iPhone--way to work it). We loved
Jake's 5 line story limerick about walking the line of food diplomacy. Berta
penned a mother's hopes that her recipes will live on into the next generation.
Bev's limerick about her Mom's admonition for independence assured us that they
will. Janice voiced the universal mother-strategy of luring our kids back to
the nest with food. Pennie sweetly reassured a cursing niece in limerick form.
What limerick contest among the offspring of a dairy farmer
wouldn’t comment on the harsh character burnishing exercises of morning
milkings, hunky farm hands and a nod to the Got Milk Stache? This one did. It
makes me wonder if our offspring will be able to write limericks of memory
about their trying times playing Super Mario Kart.
It is a contest. No matter how good all of the entries
someone had to win. Our winner leapt off the page in all four areas.
From Aunt Judy Boggs:
There once was a gal named Bonita
Who never had seen a fajita
But glasses clicked high
When she brought out her pie
To a crowd shouting . . . Bon Appetita!!
This one made us both, literally, exclaim, “Wow!” Bonita,
fajita, Bon Appetita? Brilliant rhyming. And the image of us all toasting Mom’s
pie. . . deliciously on the money! Judy, Let us know when you can stop by for
pie.
Take care
Roger and Bev.
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