Dear Blog Reader.
It is my distinct pleasure to announce the winner of the 2019 Hoover family/friend/acquaintance limerick contest. This year marks the 7th anniversary of the event to honor Doyle Hoover, Bev’s dad. Doyle loved things like skipping with his grandkids, taking the grandkids to the state fair, ripe tomatoes, and a rhyming poem that makes you smile or even laugh out loud. This year's theme will be BABIES AND EARLY CHILDHOOD MEMORIES.
You’ll remember the announcement for the contest. It include an internet GIF of a baby having its poor little cheeks squeezed. Did you find that disturbing? I did. How does the little baby ever outrun that memory? When the memory fades, Facebook will throw up “remember 7 years ago post” and he or she will run from the room screaming “I hate the name sweet cheeks!”
Hasn’t social media changed the way we remember things? Rather than “I was sitting in the living room of our house watching the town cop hassle my dad for lighting fireworks celebrating man’s steps and mankind’s leaps on the moon”, we get pictures of a bunch of geriatrics posing for the 50th anniversary of moonwalkers.
Memories are complicated. They get more complicated as the years roll by. Speaking of rolling by, my iPhone has pointed out another disturbing reminder of days past. Every time an application asks for a date of birth, it provides a virtual wheel for me to scroll back to my birthday. My thumb gets tired rolling that far back. I feel like I am on the wheel of fortune really having to put my back into it to get the big wheel to spin an entire rotation so I can qualify for the big show case. (Chevy Nova $3950)
Memories are complicated and so hard to wrap up in five AABBA rhyming lines with an anapestic (thanks Lisa Low for a PhD word to impress my friends) rhythm. Memories free us or trip us up and often come unbidden. To that end, I would like to thank everyone who went for the gold or pie this year and did such a great job encapsulating their memories in those 5 lines of witty humor. There were trike rides, fudgesicle stains, accidental 911 calls, water slide rides, and birth order recaps. Everyone did a great job putting themselves out there.
But as will all great contests, winnowing must take place, points assigned and a winner’s pie selected and made.
Drum roll please ! ! !
In third place . . . Cyndi Rohlf “rohlfing” a banana.
Time after time drives to see Nana
I remember throwing up a banana
The Rathmacher Kin
Say pass the trash bin
Many memories in Indiana
In second place . . . Grace Kozak evoking vivid memories of a slobbery game of fetch.
Busi brought me a slobbery ball
I can’t have been four feet tall
Threw with all of my might
The dog’s eyes were alight
As she obediently heeled to my call.
Finally winner of the pie of her choice and one of the many apples of her father’s eye . . . Cindy Pyle pulling all of the grandparent strings of this grandpa.
As a mom I truly was blessed
With little to zero days rest
But then came the day
I was happy to say
“Being a Memaw is simply the best!”
Until next year, may your pie winning dreams fuel a host of Doyle’s 5 line ditties, share them with your friends, neighbors and kin. As Johnny Cash once sang, May the Circle be unbroken.
Take care,
Roger
