"I'm afraid I'm revealing my age," says 'CJD,' of Lafayette.
"I was telling my grandson, 'Imagine a world where you had to walk up to the TV to turn it on and walk up to it to turn it off.
"'Or walk up to it to turn volume up or down, or walk up to it to change the channel to the second channel (we only had two).'
"He said, 'You had to do that? Wow, that's horrible!'"
Weird auntie
Our story about drivers' hand and arm signals brought this tale from Nancy Van Den Akker, of New Orleans:
"I used to ride an adult trike, and used hand signals to let drivers know what I was going to do. (Learned them from watching my dad in the days before turn signals.)
"I rode by my nephew's high school one day, and he reported seeing me to his mother.
"'Did you say hello?', she asked.
"He said, 'No. She was making funny hand motions.'"
Treasured moments
Peggy Villemarette says, "I stepped in to babysit my recent kindergarten graduate twins, Everette and Katherine Roark, while their mom, Megan, and big sister, Charlotte, completed their school year.
"For lunch I took them to a fast food place with an indoor playground. As Katherine took a bite of her waffle fries she gazed up and said very thoughtfully, 'I wish I didn't have a brain so I wouldn't think of so many amazing things and then try to figure out how to make them happen.'"
Catch of the day
"At Alligator Bayou, we caught bream and catfish, but the neatest catch was a gar," says Keith Horcasitas, of Baton Rouge.
"After unsuccessful tries with regular hooks, oldest son Andrew realized a treble hook was needed for that long alligator-like mouth. After the change, he threw in the line and we hooked the gar.
"I got the long net and scooped it up before it broke the line. Andrew had to carefully use pliers to remove the hooks; the gar's razor-sharp teeth are dangerous.
"We could have kept it, but decided to let it go. Boy, did it swim away fast!"
Have a ball
New Orleans Yat Keith Horcasitas' story about catching a gar, then releasing it, proves he's not a Cajun. Here's what a Cajun would have done:
First, make a roux for a brown gravy. While that's simmering, grind or finely chop the gar meat, mixing it with the Cajun 'trinity' of celery, green onion, and green peppers (or jalapeño), eggs, breadcrumbs, and Cajun seasoning. Roll into balls.
Flour the gar balls, fry them, put them in the gravy, serve over rice.
Special People Dept.
Ted and Myrtis Mason, of Lacombe, celebrate their 69th anniversary Tuesday, May 28.
Say what?
— "I went to the doctor for treatment of a bone spur," says Terry Grundmann, of Kenner. "He said he‘d shave the bone, insert a metal rod, use a couple of screws, and I’d be on crushers a while."
— Thomas Cunningham says, "As youngsters, our staple fare, spaghetti, was renamed basghetti by my cousin, and remains basghetti in my mind today."
— Tina Soong, of Covington, says, "At a welcoming party, the new immigrant said, 'I shall embarrassing the American culture…' (I think he meant embracing!)"
— Gerald Eiermann says, "I just received a video of my 3-year-old grandson Walter, of Panama City, Florida, reciting the Lord's Prayer: 'Our Father who art in heaven, Howard be thy name…'"