Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 3, 1993 TAG: 9311040246
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
These Jaycees down in Colonial Heights, obviously out for a little old- fashioned fun, hanged a replica of Barney as part of their Halloween exhibit.
In the unlikely event that some of you don't know about Barney, he is this cuddly, just adorable stuffed dinosaur that kids are nuts about.
I wish that we had said in Radford that this is the kind of barbarism that has always tried to pull man/woman down from his/her destiny beyond the stars.
You were afraid to talk like that when you were playing eight ball or rotation pool at Lonnie's Billiard Parlor.
Anyway, some mothers got mad about their children seeing Barney that way and I suspect they worried that such trauma might unhinge little Siegfried and he'd throw a hand grenade into the kitchen while they were shelling peas.
When my children were young we had sturdier toys. We had Barbie - a doll I gladly would have hanged - and the original GI Joe. I liked Joe. No Jaycee ever fooled around with either of these people, pal. They were tough.
Live, and onstage, we had the Jackson Five, from which group emerged a peculiar person who wears a glove on one hand and looks like his sisters.
But, getting back to Barney, I have to admit that he is too sweety-sweet for me, and I thought it was kind of funny that they hanged him.
(Please direct all of your complaints about the above to somebody's else's voice mail. Fortunately, I no longer have voice mail, which makes me happy.
(If you want to fight, I am hardly ever at home and most of the time, my old-fashioned rotary phone is used by people trying to sell me things. If you decide to drop by, be warned that my dog Millie is a highly trained attack animal who shows no mercy unless you give her a little snack.)
But let us move along here to the egregious matter of Ron Reagan having only three references in Bartlett's Famous Quotations.
(Although egregious is a very nice word, we never used it in Radford. It is not an eight ball kind of word.)
This guy has charged that somebody is stacking Bartlett's against the former president by giving him little space. This may be true but I can't imagine scholars 50 years from now having the faintest interest in anything Reagan said. About anything.
There might be more interest in one of Barney's quotations: ``I love you/ You love me.''
Of course, there is the famous Reagan line from ``King's Row,'' which was, ``Where's the rest of me?'' This question continues to haunt American political history.''
No. Don't be silly. Of course I'm not in Bartlett's.
I don't think Walter Mondale is either, although I really never looked.
I dunno. That ``Where's the Beef?'' line wasn't all that bad.
I know why I'm not in Bartlett's. It's simple. They're jealous because I use the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, which I got for Christmas in 1986.
by CNB