Best Days

This is a repost from 2013 when I was posting favorites every Friday.   I’m feeling nostalgic this morning so I thought I’d post it again.  It’s one of my favorite favorites.

There are certain movies I can watch over and over again … it drives Muri crazy. Most of the films aren’t great films, although I do hold the North American record for viewings of The Godfather. My favorites are usually romantic and each has a scene I love: Sally Albright faking an orgasm in a busy restaurant in When Harry Met Sally; Ronnie Camereri and Loretta Castorini at the opera in Moonstruck; Bill Johnson, the soda jerk, discovering color and art in Pleasantville; Phil Connors gradually learning to be human by living Groundhog Day again and again. In Billy Crystal’s City Slickers, as Mitch, Phil and Ed are driving the herd from New Mexico to Colorado, Mitch talks about his Best Day, a trip to Yankee Stadium with his father.

Throwback Thursday – Bright Lights

Here it is, the first Thursday of (gasp) 2016.  That makes my birth year, 1944, sound like is was very long ago.  Yes, I know.  It was. So for the first Throwback Thursday of the year, I’m reposting an anecdote that happened on the day of my birth.

One of the treasures I saved from my father’s house when he moved to assisted living is a letter my Mom wrote from Casper, WY, where my father was stationed at the Army Air Corps Heavy Bomber Training Unit.  The letter begins, Dear Mother and Dad, This is an extra special important letter so I’ll send it to the two of you  (You’d best sit down, Mom).  It continues, You two have been married too long to be just Mom and Dad.  Don’t you think it’s time you were Grandma and Grampa?  My Mom was telling her parents that she was four and a half months pregnant with me.  Of course, they didn’t know I was me yet, so they’d nicknamed me Stinky, Jr.  Thank goodness that it was Buddy that eventually stuck as my nickname.  The letter says, I hope we do have a boy … with blue eyes and a dimple in its chin … not the other end like me.  Hmm.  I have brown eyes, by the way.   In the letter, my Mom went on to ask if it was OK for her to come home and live with her Mom and Dad while my Dad was shipped overseas to Italy to fight the war.   I’ll have a Pullman all the way home, she said … for free, too.  The Army was paying.  Trains played a big part in my Mom’s travels when she and Dad were first married.   There was even a running family joke that my real Dad was a porter.  All you have to do is see a picture of my Dad and I together and you’ll know the truth.