Dear Smiley: Thanks for the mention in your column. It’s nice to be remembered.
I still don’t understand why TV reporters feel they have to stand out in a hurricane to tell me it’s really windy and there’s a lot of rain. Well, duh, it’s a hurricane!
I was grateful to go to my office where I knew I’d be comfortable and protected because, after all, there was all this sensitive equipment that required air conditioning to keep it cool enough to run, and they had really big generators to supply power to do that.
Besides, that was where I could develop the data that would tell me what the storm was going to do, not out in the dangerous wind and rain.
As for those who say, “There’s a hurricane coming. We’re all gonna die!,” I say both statements are true, except there’s simply no correlation.
Straight ahead!
MIKE GRAHAM
Baton Rouge
Dear Smiley: In the early 1950s, when I was in college and before I married, I had a necktie with a lot of fancy scrolling on it.
When held out horizontally, the scrolling spelled B...S....
For reasons that are not clear to me, shortly after I married that tie disappeared, never to be seen again.
FRED THOMAS
Abbeville
Dear Smiley: As I was talking to a friend about preparing for Isaac, he mentioned that he was keeping his “ice box” on the coldest setting.
Another one for the outdated words list.
DOUG JOHNSON
Watson
Dear Smiley: About the 1973 wreck on the interstate, “the day cows fell from the sky:”
State-Times reporter Cheramie Sonnier was looking out the window of the newsroom and commented, “There’s a cow down in the street. And there’s another one, and another one …”
Reporter Ed Pratt couldn’t stand the suspense, grabbed a camera and headed for the elevator.
The falling cows led government officials to decide that a grassy area below the interstate highway ramp wasn’t a good place for a park.
ROY PITCHFORD
Monroe
Dear Smiley: When you live in the country, the sight you want to see prior to a hurricane is the propane gas man pulling into your driveway to fill your tank.
One of the men on the truck that came to my house had on a shirt that said “Perfect,” with an arrow pointing to his head.
To me it should have said “Mr. Wonderful.”
FAYE HOFFMAN TALBOT
Jackson
Dear Smiley: Here’s my wasp story, from about 1943 or ’44.
Jimmy McAllister and I would go into the pastures off Hooper Road and look for big wasp nests.
Our method of attack was to give them a good dusting.
We found a huge one in a briar patch, covered with big red wasps.
Using a big Boy Scout handkerchief, we filled it with dust from the many cow paths running through the pasture, doused the nest and then ran for our lives.
High-tailing it down a cow path toward Hooper Road, I looked back to see a huge swarm of somewhat unhappy wasps gaining on me.
I dropped to the ground, knowing that the swarm would fly on past me — and landed right in a fresh cow dab.
Smiley, have you ever heard a swarm of wasps laughing?
CHAPMAN MORGAN
Santa Maria, Calif.
Dear Smiley: Why is it that when love bugs, or any other appropriately juicy bug, choose to commit suicide by positioning themselves in front of your car’s windshield while you’re driving down the highway at 60-plus mph, they always pick the spot directly in front of your line of vision so that you either have to crane your head to one side or the other to see past the remains, or take the chance of really smearing the guts by quickly turning on the washer and wipers? Huh?
PAUL MAJOR
Baton Rouge
Dear Paul: I don’t have an answer — but congratulations on creating what might be the longest sentence we’ve ever run.
Dear Smiley: I thought I’d respond to the gentleman’s inquiry about the moth that was attracted to his cocktail.
Please inform him it was the rare and precious “Vermoth,” which flutters over any martini, thus making it truly “extra dry!”
As any tried and true martini connoisseur can tell him, “Just a whisper of Vermoth makes all the difference in the world!”
TERRI KARAM WILLETT
Baton Rouge
Dear Smiley: They’ve been saying for years about Louisiana — unkindly, I say — “Half under water, half under indictment.”
After all that liquid Isaac, do you think the ratio has changed?
L.P. MILLER
Baton Rouge
Dear L.P.: For the moment …
Write Smiley at Smiley@theadvocate.com. He can also be reached by fax at (225) 388-0351 or mail at P.O. Box 588, Baton Rouge, LA 70821.
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