Random items

#1 Son had surgery on Friday to reconstruct his ACL, and he's doing fine, although he's of no practical use to anyone for the next few weeks. Interestingly, the surgeon used a ligament from a cadaver in the process. I remarked to #1 that it came from a Mr. Bill "Live Grenade" Johnson, who had been shot and killed by police during an attempted armored car robbery. Think I had him going there for a minute.

I mentioned to the surgeon that I had seen an old movie long ago in which, as near as I can recall, a pianist lost his hands in a terrible accident, and a mad scientist sewed on a couple of replacement mitts from a murderer who had been executed, and the pianist started getting the urge to kill people. The surgeon reassured me that #1 was unlikely to suddenly develop an urge to go about randomly kneeing people in the groin. Whew! That's a relief!

Younger Son visited today; he's now working in the construction business. He showed me a couple of souvenirs he pulled from the recent demolition of a very old house (dating back, I believe, to the turn of the last century). Here's a specimen of the nails that were used, made by a local blacksmith back in the day. #2 Son says these babies really hold the wood together, and are very hard to remove.



He also found a tiny sample tin of talcum powder. The tin still has the powder in it, and it still smells faintly sweet.






Whoa, looky here! It's December 1st. Thought I'd do something like a musical advent calendar this year, and to kick things off, here's Mabel Scott from 1948 with the Boogie Woogie Santa Claus.