Sybil Bruncheon's "Travel Notes From Around The World... Bill and Missy Bailey; 1959"...

Yes, Folks, we’ve found fun and exciting travel notes from all around the world, just for you! Bill and Missy Bailey from Coshocton, Ohio decided that they’d like to see the newest state in the USA; Hawaii! They heard about it before of course, on TV with Lucy and Ricky Ricardo visiting there, and then Connie Stevens and the nice detectives on HAWAIIAN EYE, and… um…. well… Pearl Harbor. But to fly all the way there! Why it’s almost on the other side of the Earth… what with the Earth being round and all! So they saved Bill’s salary for a whole year and booked the whole vacation… during the Summer of course when Missy’s third grade teaching job was done for the Summer!… and off they went!

They had a marvelous time! They had never seen the ocean before in person, or even salt water (well, except when Bill gargled it during his strep throat scare back in February!). And they saw hula dancing, and pigs roasting over a fire pit, and they ate clams, and lobsters, and even poi, although they hated it but ate it anyway to be polite to the native chief and his wives (or whatever they were at the big Holiday Inn Hotel in Waikiki… or Honey-Lulu).

Anyway, it was a terrific vacation, and the Baileys learned all sorts of amazing things about people from other lands, and they came back with a coconut brassiere and a grass skirt… for Bill. Missy said she didn’t want one. Oh, and they bought a nice pineapple from a man in the airport. They showed it to Carl and Muriel Johnston on the flight home… and they even let them touch it. Bill said he was surprised that TWA allowed pets on the plane!.. and without a leash! But it never bit anyone…

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From Sybil Bruncheon's "My Merry Memoirs"... and the not so merry...

I was stunned when I first went to Hawaii many, many years ago and saw poinsettias towering over the adorable bungalows there… as trees!! It broke my heart to realize that all the beautiful poinsettias people on the mainland were giving each other at Christmas (and killing by not watering them or depriving them of sunlight, etc.) were actually trees that had been thoughtlessly kidnapped from their native-homes for nonsense. NONSENSE!

Wrapped in hideous aluminum foil, tossed into corners of over-heated dentists' offices, knocked over by toppling stacks of Highlights and Jack & Jill magazines, and finally thrown leggy and wilted onto frigid January sidewalks to be carted off with bewildered and abandoned Christmas trees... Even as a child, I found the Holiday season filled with an encroaching melancholy in any corner of the festivities, ready to creep out from under a stack of gaily wrapped gifts or a brightly lit and ornamented garland to tug at one's hem and break your heart.

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CHRISTMAS MUSIC: Guilty Pleasures & Dirty Confessions... The Andrews Sisters...

I know it's very tacky, but I start listening to the Music Choice "Sounds of the Seasons" channel on cable during Thanksgiving week.... As silly as it is to many people, I sometimes just enjoy the simple pleasure of Christmas carols to ease my mind and lower my stress.

Having said that, I can now admit both a dirty secret AND a guilty pleasure at the same time! As if it isn’t enough that they sang “Mele Kalikimaka” with Bing Crosby, the Andrews Sisters also released “How’d Ya Like To Spend Christmas On Christmas Island?”. Talk about schmaltzy! And Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians are along for the ride. Between this song and “Mele Kalikimaka” it’s as if the music industry wanted to try to rehabilitate the image of the South Pacific after the catastrophes of Pearl Harbor and World War II!... either that or Decca Records was trying to teach American farmhands geography!

Anyway, whenever the Music Choice Channel plays “Mele Kalikimaka”, I always grab my coconut brassiere and grass skirt, run to my full-length mirror, and hope for a medley into “How’d Ya Like To Spend Christmas On Christmas Island?”! I can see all those handsome GIs waving and hooting for me again at the Munda Airstrip in the Solomon Islands! Bob Hope and the Sisters are there, and I give it my USO-best!!!  

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