I’m not sure if anyone has heard of a lady who may or may not be involved in radio in Buellton, California, but we sure heard a lot from her. We had just ordered our food at Pea Soup Andersen’s after a weary night sleeping in the car (150 miles of coastline and NOT ONE DAMN VACANCY at a hotel. NOT ONE. It’s another post altogether…)
So we’re just getting into our appetizers (bowls of split pea soup which were quite good, as pea soup goes) when we hear a lady behind us utter the phrase “The glass ketchup bottle in on it’s way out…”. She then proceeded to hold forth (And I timed this) for roughly 24 minutes uninterrupted about the night her husband (or somebody) told her this. This was followed by an accounting of the time she was at a carnival, and there was a man in a booth who could make ketchup pour easily from any kind of bottle, glass, plastic, short, tall, you name it. He taught her how to do it, and she impressed her friends at a barbecue. Then there was some stuff about how she got started in radio, and how she either now works, or used to work, or knows someone who started working at an Insurance company. And she made good money when she started, even though she didn’t know what she was doing.
And her friend, the poor, polite, silently nodding thing, sat there the whole time and said not one word. Not even when the check came and they got up to leave. The radio lady never stopped speaking. Incredible.
So Today I get a second call from my recenetly wed son (Wheeeeee) asking for the whereabouts of the European relatives that are wandering hither and yon in these United States. I understand his concern; recently wed, trying to establish a household… and somewhere out there, like Gypsies are his Uncle, Aunts and Cousin.
You may be wondering just what this all has to do with glass ketchup bottles. You can’t get some folks to be quiet and then thre are tose that you can’t get to tell you a thing (European realtives for one.)