Little Black Sambo

My To Do List is excessively long, so instead of tackling it, I'm doing right brain aerobics. Aimee sent my Facebook account two Free Gifts: one is a very thoughtful Candy Corn Double Striped Highway Cone which will come in super handy as I'm driving through Halloween construction in a couple of months, and the other is a keyboard because she knows I'm still plugging away at chord progressions. If she were any kind of friend she'd create mnemonics for all of them. While trying to select a new gift to send Aim, I noticed the tallest stack of buttered pancakes I've seen all day. For some reason it reminded me of one of my favorite childhood books, Little Black Sambo. I doubt that book is even in print these days. Likely, someone has labeled it racist. Our family's copy was a thin, well-worn paperback. Mom was always the parent who read stories to us and I loved it. She changed her voice for each character. Whenever she'd slip up, we'd say, "That's not what the Little Red Hen sounded like!" and she'd change accordingly. Dad was the story teller. I wish he would have recorded his stories over the years. He could create them at will. The grandkids loved his Chester and Sarah stories--trolls and a bridge and cousins with rhyming names. While Mom read gobs of books and several stories to us, especially the Brothers Grimm, I remember Dad reading three books in particular. I haven't a clue why Mom didn't read those three. Maybe Dad's voice was a better fit. Or perhaps it was just his passion. Mom just couldn’t read Little Black Sambo with as much pathos as Dad. When Little Black Sambo's mom, Black Mumbo, sewed him the fine new clothes, and his dad, Black Jumbo, bought him the little purple shoes Dad made them sound the grandest possessions a person could own. I wanted Mom to make me a little pair of blue trousers and a red coat. She never did, but I still managed to have a successful, happy childhood. Basically. When Dad read, I'd always get mad when those four tigers, one at a time, tormented Little Black Sambo to the point of forcing him to fork over his cute little clothes. They weren’t just plain old every day tigers one encounters under the bed or in a dark alley, but big, fierce Indian tigers who talked and threatened to gobble innocent little kids--the kind found on every elementary school playground at recess time when the teacher is nowhere in sight. Even though I always knew how the story would end, I'd still shiver when the tigers began fighting over their new blue trousers, red shirt, green umbrella and purple shoes. (My cerebral cobwebs might have skewed the colors.) My favorite part of the book was when the tigers chased themselves round and round the tree until they turned into a giant puddle of butter. Black Jumbo came along and scooped the tiger butter into a pail and carted it home. Black Mumbo did the only sensible thing a mother could do; she made pancakes. The little family topped the flapjacks with the fresh jungle butter and Little Black Sambo ate the amount of a Pancake Lover's Dream: 169 pancakes.

Louis L'Amour

This blog is wearing NBs because of my good friend, Matt. He's my computer Go To and has recently been my burly cheerleader for setting up this blog site. This morning I read Casey's blog from Argentina. Wow! It inspired me to begin blogging and jogging. Today I blog, tomorrow I jog. Gracias, Casey! Mark groaned when I told him I intend to become a bloggin' mama. He hates blogs, but he loves to read westerns. When he sees the title of this one, it'll suck him in. Since this is my first entry, I'll pause just now and go rustle up some grub for the young 'uns. Keep your powder dry.