~ Telling the Truth, Mainly
Fibber McGee tells the filling station attendant to put 5 gallons of gasoline in the tank.
It costs Fibber 91 cents.
***
“The Motorcycle Cop, the Judge, and Fibber.” Fibber McGee and Molly, April 16, 1935.
Image produced by NBC., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
One Saturday when I was twelve, my mother, brandishing a dust mop, flushed a mouse out of my Fibber McGee’s closet.
My cat, Ashley, brought in as a consultant, caught the mouse, his first, and pranced toward me with his offering.
I screamed and jumped onto the bed.
Ashley dropped the mouse.
The mouse ran back into the closet.
Ashley spent the rest of the afternoon sitting on the windowsill, staring out across the yard, refusing my mother’s pleas to try again.
“Ashley was proud of himself. He was bringing you a present. You hurt his feelings.” My mother spent the rest of the day glaring at me. It wasn’t about Ashley’s feelings.
Ashley resigned from his post as Head of Household Rodent Control.
I spent the rest of the day trying to civilize the closet.
I have no idea what happened to the mouse.
I don’t remember Fibber McGee’s closet myself, but I was told it was a dead ringer for mine.
Read about Fibber McGee and Molly at Wikipedia.
Listen to recordings of over 1,000 episodes of Fibber McGee and Molly at Internet Archive. (And if you come across the episode in which the phrase “Politics makes strange bedfellows” generates some confusion and considerable laughter, please leave its number in a comment.)
Image of mouse by Zachariah Kyle Pieterse from Pixabay
Image of cat by Zachariah Kyle Pieterse from Pixabay
Image of Fibber McGee’s closet by Dell Publications. Publisher and copyright information are on the magazine’s page 3., Public domain, via Wikimedia
I and Pangur Bán, my cat,
‘Tis a like task we are at;
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.
Better far than praise of men
‘Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill-will,
He, too, plies his simple skill.
‘Tis a merry thing to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.
Oftentimes a mouse will stray
In the hero Pangur’s way;
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.
‘Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
‘Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.
When a mouse darts from its den,
O! how glad is Pangur then;
O! what gladness do I prove
When I solve the doubts I love.
So in peace our task we ply,
Pangur Bán, my cat, and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine, and he has his.
Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade;
I get wisdom day and night,
Turning darkness into light.
***
“‘Pangur Bán‘ is an Old Irish poem written in about the 9th century at or near Reichenau Abbey, in what is now Germany, by an Irish monk about his cat. Pangur Bán, ‘White Pangur’, is the cat’s name, Pangur possibly meaning ‘a fuller’. Although the poem is anonymous, it bears similarities to the poetry of Sedulius Scottus, prompting speculation that he is the author. In eight verses of four lines each, the author compares the cat’s happy hunting with his own scholarly pursuits.
“The poem is preserved in the Reichenau Primer (Stift St. Paul Cod. 86b/1 fol 1v) and now kept in St. Paul’s Abbey in the Lavanttal. . . .
“In 2016, Jo Ellen Bogart and Sydney Smith published a picture book based on the poem called The White Cat and the Monk.”
English translation by Robin Flower (1912, The Poem Book of the Gaef)
—From Wikipedia
Read the original Old Irish version at Wikipedia.
Hear The White Cat and the Monk read aloud on Youtube.
M. K. Waller 