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Highlands Today

Come Fly In My Beautiful Balloon

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By Norm Cukras | Highlands Today

Published: May 31, 2008

It was up, up and away, this morning. At least I, and a bunch of others, including Elizabeth Stewart, hope it was an up, up and away morning.

Elizabeth, you see, is celebrating her 90th birthday on June 4. Since there isn't a whole lot of things you can get for a member of the eldest set, her daughter Barbara is surprising her with a hot air balloon ride today - weather permitting. It's a first for both of them. Not only that it is also a kind of a gift package. Barbara – yes that's county commissioner Barbara Stewart – is celebrating her May 12 wedding anniversary by taking husband Fred along on the same ride.

The skies around Sebring will be filled with the brightly colored flying machines in which rides will be offered in an event designed to raise funds for the county's Boys and Girls Clubs.

The commissioner's mother, who was born in Albany N.Y., has a special interest in children. She is a retired schoolteacher. Even today she continues to work with children. She volunteers one day a week at Fred Wild Elementary School teaching Pre-K migrant children."She's a great mom," Barbara says of the lady who is mother of four children, grandmother of six and great-grandmother of four.
Happy Birthday Elizabeth.

Things I LearnedReading My E-mail
It is written (somewhere) that it is better to light one candle than it is to curse the darkness. For more years than I care to remember I've always cursed the makers of plastic wrap and aluminum foil because every time I try to pull some out of the box the whole roll comes out and starts to unroll making a mess for my wife to figure out.

Then I got this i-message that said in effect, "Did you ever look at the end of the box?" There in plain English, which in itself is unusual, are the instructions to "Push In To Lock" or some such wording.

When you do that little tabs are pushed into the ends of the roll that will keep it from pulling out of the box. On the top of one box there is even the message, "Locking Ends."

I have a feeling that this is a relatively new feature since I found at least one box in the pantry without the locking mechanism. I guess with all the ED commercials taking up airtime there isn't room for instructional messages.

Why Not A Norman's?
While waiting again in a doctor's office I happened to pick up a frayed and ancient copy of Woman's Home Journal. Therein was a recipe for Garth Brooks' favorite chocolate cake. I once offered my readers a recipe for a snack treat called Pigeon Poop with which I included a recipe for a dessert called "The next best thing to Robert Redford." And if you can remember the old Fat Boy's out on U.S.
27: Jerry Chasteen even offered a Murphy omelet named for local medical man Dr. Vernon Murphy.

But no one ever seems to be interested in publishing a recipe for one of Norman's favorite things. Maybe it's because I'm partial to strange stuff like swamp cabbage, chicken livers and soups, as in: I've never found one I didn't like.

Oh well. Besides how many people would know who a Norman was named after anyway?

Two-fers
There was a time when straws came in twin-pacs. Remember? They were neat because you could share a soda with your sweetie. Except for milk shakes, which were too thick to suck through those skimpy straws. Another drawback to the two-fers was that if you used both at the same time there was a tendency for them to dribble through the space between them.

At least it was a problem I had. Then one day I ordered a drink and inside the wrapper was just one straw. Another era had come to an end.

And it's just as well. The new bigger ones are better and you can blow the wrapper farther.

Overheard
Overheard at the checkout counter: It's not her shopping that bothers me, it's her spending.

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