“Oh Carol…you got me eatin' my heart away…”

From 1959 to 1962, comedienne Carol Burnett was a supporting cast member of CBS-TV’s popular The Garry Moore Show—a gig that netted her the first of what would eventually result in a buttload of Emmy awards (I believe the total is six).  She left that variety hour to pursue other projects, but the Tiffany network was most anxious to continue their association with their second favorite redhead, particularly after she scored a second Emmy trophy for the 1962 special Julie (Andrews) and Carol at Carnegie Hall.  The network inked a ten-year-deal with Carol, obligating her to do two guest appearances and one television special a year.

There was also a clause in the contract that Burnett describes in retrospect as a “push the button” option.  After five years, if Carol wanted to do a variety show of her own, CBS would be obligated to put the program on the air for a guaranteed season of thirty episodes—even if it only consisted of the performer simply scratching herself for sixty minutes.  The Powers That Be (represented by Mike Dann, head of CBS) tried to wave Burnett off this, chauvinistically explaining that the variety hour was “a man’s genre.”  Despite the support for this theory (most of TV’s top variety shows were headlined by males such as Jackie Gleason, Red Skelton…and Carol’s old boss, Garry Moore) Carol and husband Joe Hamilton were determined to take advantage of the clause (particularly since the alternative was for Burnett to star in a expectedly lame sitcom titled Here’s Agnes).  Nothing brightens the mood more of a die-hard couch potato when The Suits turn out to be wrong…because the result of Carol and Joe’s efforts would run for eleven seasons and become one of CBS’ most successful variety series: The Carol Burnett Show.

It would be a major understatement to say that Carol Burnett’s long-running variety hour set a high bar for programs of its type.  It’s due in large part to the lady herself; I know it’s a bit of a cliché to use words like “comedic legend” and “genius” when discussing Burnett’s boob tube legacy…but there’s a reason why The Carol Burnett Show turns up on so many “Greatest Shows of All Time” lists—it was damn good television, and Burnett was just aces.  When I think of Burnett, I think of the word “fearless”; I know of very few performers who would throw caution to the winds and not care about how they looked if the rewards for being goofy resulted in loud, appreciative laughter.  There is a magic quality about Carol Burnett: she comes across as gangly and gawky one minute and movie-star glamorous the next.  But there’s also a genuine, down-to-earth warmth about the woman, which clearly came across in every portion of her show from her opening give-and-take with the audience to the unpretentious and often endearing sketches on the program.

I find that a lot of people enjoy the program despite its occasional lapses into corniness because much of it was steeped in a “classic Hollywood” tradition, from its high-wattage guest stars (Betty Grable, Lana Turner, Mickey Rooney) to the frequent parodies of old films (Gone with the Wind, Sunset Boulevard).  During my halcyon high school years, the Burnett show was a Saturday night tradition (it’s funny how I associate the show with Saturday nights, when during most of its run it was seen on Mondays and then Wednesdays) as well as a weekday attraction thanks to the syndicated Carol Burnett and Friends, a half-hour compilation of comedy sketches that aired on the primetime hour from 1972 to 1977.  (MeTV recently added Burnett and Friends to their lineup…which we are not able to watch here at Rancho Yesteryear because Dish refuses to carry the substations of our local channels, boo hiss.)

It's not an acid flashback. Only on The Carol Burnett Show can you find (L-R) Carol, Phyllis Diller, Bobbie Gentry and Gwen Verdon as Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

But here’s the revelatory part of this essay: for a good many years, I had a tendency to wince whenever The Carol Burnett Show was mentioned in conversation.  Granted, I watched the show—but I had kind of developed an animosity towards it.  The reasons for this are kind of hard to pin down; one explanation is that I had cultivated a dislike for the show’s players’ tendency to “break” by giggling and laughing at themselves during sketches.  Because I was dabbling in high school dramatics at the time Carol’s show was on the air, it was pressed upon me that breaking character was verboten…and yet, here were paid professionals doing it all the time.  I could understand these kinds of shenanigans if it were a live program…but The Carol Burnett Show was taped—could they not have edited that nonsense out and gone with a fresh take?  (Burnett defends the practice by stating that although it was a taped show, it was performed before a live audience…and they genuinely enjoyed those times when the cast was unable to keep it together.)

And so it begins.

Another reason why I held the show at arm’s length as if it were something that had been left in the fridge too long was that at the same time I was watching Carol I had also started watching Saturday Night Live—you know, back when it was good—and I found that SNL appealed more to my admittedly warped sensibilities than the old-fashioned Burnett hour.  (In two of the SNL histories I’ve read, it was an unwritten rule that “breaking” was something that was severely frowned upon because it was so reminiscent of the “unprofessional” Carol Burnett Show.  Some of SNL’s later cast members—*cough*Jimmy Fallon, Horatio Sanz*—apparently didn’t get the memo.)  The Carol Burnett Show was never what you would call “edgy,” though they occasionally came close with the “Family” sketches…which I often found more melancholy than funny.

But here’s where I get redemption, friends and neighbors.  Thanks to Michael Krause at Foundry Communications, I have rediscovered what an absolute delight The Carol Burnett Show can be.  Michael made available to me a “screener” of The Carol Burnett Show: The Lost Episodes—a slimmed-down version of Time Life’s previous 2012 release The Carol Burnett Show: The Ultimate Collection (Carol—have you lost weight?).  Lost Episodes, released this past September 15, is a six-disc collection featuring sixteen uncut episodes originally broadcast between 1967 and 1972 and is designed more for the casual Burnett fan (if you’re really crazy about Carol, you should spring for the whole enchilada).  I’m not kidding about the “uncut” part of that, either; they don’t include commercials but they left in the “bumpers,” allowing you to reminisce about the good old days of Jubilee wax polish (I think they still make this, btw) and Cold Power detergent.

Included on this set is the September 11, 1967 premiere, which established Carol’s good friend Jim “Shazam!” Nabors as her “good luck charm” (Nabors would be the guest on each subsequent season opener) and the highlights include a melody of Broadway show tunes sung by the pair as well as an amusing sketch where Carol and Jim play klutzes vacationing at a ski lodge.  Carol also introduces her Shirley Temple parody (Shirley Dimple), and I wound up on the floor laughing when she tells interviewer Harvey Korman: “Jane Withers said something to me once in a movie that wasn’t very nice and you know what happened to her?  My fairy godmother changed her into a plumber!”  (I know—I laugh at the strangest things.)

Which twin has the Toni? (Both of them have Emmys, I know that.)

Not all of the content on the show holds up through a modern-day prism, I should point out.  The premiere also spotlights what would be a recurring feature on the show in the form of “Carol and Sis.”  Inspired by a real-life situation where Burnett’s younger sister Christine lived with Carol and Joe for many years, “Carol and Sis” was a showcase for young Vicki Lawrence, who was hired to do the series after a number of people remarked on her resemblance to Burnett (Lawrence wrote a fan letter to Carol, who later attended a beauty contest that Vicki entered…and handed her the prize when Lawrence won).  Harvey Korman played Carol’s husband Roger, and if the real-life Hamilton-Burnett relationship was anything like the TV one it’s a miracle the two of them stayed together as long as they did.  (Roger is a particularly unpleasant individual, though I suspect he was written that way for comedic effect.)

Hey, everybody! It's William Schallert (The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, The Patty Duke Show)!

That having been said, several of the shows on Lost Episodes demonstrate why The Carol Burnett Show represents the gold standard of variety TV series.  Among the highlights:

November 4, 1968:  Guests Lucille Ball, Eddie Albert and Nancy Wilson appear in an edition of “As the Stomach Turns” where Nancy plays Canoga Falls’ first black resident.  The “As the Stomach Turns” parodies number among my favorite Burnett Show sketches mainly because soap operas in themselves are so insanely insipid they naturally lend themselves to great comedy.  But the addition of Wilson as the “town Negro” is both dated and yet slightly subversive (Nancy introduces herself as “Julia”—a dig at the Diahann Carroll sitcom—and at one point straight-facedly remarks to Albert’s character “You’re a credit to your race”).

From November 17, 1969: the King Family are profiled on "V.I.P."  (The family member to the right in the back row is Isabel Sanford, later of The Jeffersons.)

November 11, 1968:  The following week, Carol plays host to Don Rickles, Nanette Fabray and Mel Tormé.  A little bit of Mel goes a long way with me but since he participates in a funny 1940s film parody entitled “The Tin Pan Alley Story” I didn’t mind him too much (Korman plays a character that makes frequent appearances on the show: impresario Ziggy Flofeld).  This is the show that features that sketch I alluded to in the previous Don Rickles essay (Don plays a harried shoe salesman who gets a bit of grief from unreasonable customer Nanette—which jeopardizes his future career); “Alive and Kicking” spotlighted a similar skit with Rickles having to kowtow to boss Korman.

January 19, 1970:  With guests Vikki Carr and Flip Wilson (who would launch his own successful variety show in the fall until he got his ass kicked by The Waltons), the Burnett show sends up Mission: Impossible with the side-splitting “Mission: Improbable.”  Every time Carol finishes a speech as the Barbara Bain-like “Oregano Farber,“ someone hands her an Emmy (a reference to Bain’s multiple wins), and Flip gets to don drag as a Geraldine-like character.  The parody ends with a surprise appearance from Mission’s star foursome at that time: Peter Graves, Leonard Nimoy, Peter Lupus and Greg Morris!

October 2, 1967 marks the first Carol Burnett Show appearance of CBS' favorite redhead, Lucille Ball.  This "Argentine Cafe" sketch is hysterical, with Harvey Korman at his best as a Teutonic headwaiter named "Pedro."

February 22, 1971:  Admittedly, this telecast is no great shakes (though you will get to see Chita Rivera perform “Lucretia MacEvil” as a spider-woman years before Broadway’s Kiss of the Spider Woman) but it’s worth it just for the Nelson Eddy-Jeanette MacDonald parody “Naughty Rosemarie” and Bob Newhart’s swishy turn as “The Marquis de Fop.”  A year later in a February 23, 1972 show, Burt Reynolds camped it up as “The Lavender Pimpernel.”  Burt also performs a song-and-dance to “As Time Goes By,” which shows off his previous talent as a Hollywood stuntman.  Stuntman.  (See what I did there, Hal?)

Regardez.

November 3, 1971:  No Carol Burnett Show sketch in this collection made me laugh harder (not even the “Mission: Improbable” skit) than “The Drunkard’s Daughter,” a send-up of those old-time moralizing melodramas.  Guest Bing Crosby is “the drunkard,” whose daughter (Carol) ineffectively tries to keep him from succumbing to demon rum, Lyle Waggoner plays a Dudley Do-Right-like Mountie, and guest Paul Lynde and regular Harvey Korman play “twin” villains, complete with twirling moustaches and stovepipe hats.  (Lynde channels his “Hooded Claw” voice from The Perils of Penelope Pitstop and Harvey mimics him flawlessly every step of the way.)  Bonus points to costume designer Bob Mackie for that incredible “vamp” costume he provided for Vicki Lawrence.

I believe the word we're searching for is "Yowsah!"

Carol Burnett Show fans know that Lyle Waggoner functioned not only as the program’s announcer but as a featured player before exiting in 1974 (he didn’t really give up this gig for Wonder Woman, did he?).  Actor-comedian Tim Conway became an official member of the cast in 1975 after many, many years of appearing as one of the Burnett Show’s favorite guests.  Conway’s debut appearance on the program (October 2, 1967—also Lucille Ball’s first Burnett Show appearance) is included in this set, in addition to three other shows (the January 6, 1969 telecast features “The Night They Raided Rimsky’s,” which I chuckled at throughout because The Night They Raided Minsky’s is a favorite movie of mine).  Tim is an achingly funny guy…but he got absolute screams from me during one “Q&A” segment in which he introduces some of his family members in the audience.

Vicki and dancer Don Crichton pay dance tribute to a pair of memorable Laugh-In characters.  (The real Ruth Buzzi and Arte Johnson appear at the end.)

Vicki Lawrence would be the only Burnett Show cast member to stick with Carol for the entirety of the program’s eleven-year run; Harvey Korman (who had some impressive variety hour chops before he began his association with Carol, having been a semi-regular on The Danny Kaye Show) left the show before its last season for a development deal with ABC (which included Snavely, a pilot for an Americanized version of Fawlty Towers that was mercifully killed in its crib) and television legend Dick Van Dyke joined the Burnett Show cast briefly in Harvey’s place.  At the end of eleven seasons, Carol announced to CBS that the variety show as they knew it was starting to die on the vine and that she was ready for a rest.  There were a few attempts to apply paddles to the program (including a four-week ABC summer series entitled Carol Burnett & Company in 1979, and a return to CBS in 1991 for a revival version with new cast members) but for the most part, The Carol Burnett Show is now in rerun heaven as Carol Burnett & Friends.

There are any number of explanations as to why the “lost episodes” of The Carol Burnett Show have been AWOL for so long (I suspect it’s the usual legal entanglements involving copyrights) but I’m so glad they were able to jump through the hoops to put together this collection because it’s really a first-rate release.  (I’m also so glad we had this time together…just to have a laugh or sing a song.)  I cannot recommend this set highly enough, and suggest you hie yourself to your nearest brick-and-mortar or online store to pick up a copy.

“Natalie…take a cab!”

Back in May of this year, I wrote a review of the DVD release CPO Sharkey: The Complete Season 1—and in my closing remarks, I casually noted that I’d really be excited about the release of the sitcom’s second and final season “if Time Life gets that far.”  Well, guess what?  Time Life did get that far; they brought forth CPO Sharkey: Season 2 on September 22…and thanks to my good friend Michael Krause at Foundry Communications, I was given an opportunity to check this set out.

Both seasons of CPO Sharkey, while also sold separately, will be part of a later release this October 20: Mr. Warmth! Don Rickles: The Ultimate TV Collection, an eight-disc set that also features a compilation (which will be released this October 13) entitled The Don Rickles TV Specials: Volume 1.  This release consists of an ABC-TV special, “The Many Sides of Don Rickles” (which originally aired September 17, 1970) and CBS’ “Don Rickles: Alive and Kicking” (from December 12, 1972).  Michael generously provided me with a screener for this release as well.

As my chum and colleague Andrew “Grover” Leal remarked on Facebook when I announced the blog would be coming back after a long hiatus: “Enough Don Rickles to keep a hockey team in pucks for years!”  Truth be told, I was thoroughly entertained by CPO Sharkey: Season 2, for I have long argued that it was the perfect situation comedy vehicle for the comic known as “The Merchant of Venom” (his 1971 effort, The Don Rickles Show, lasted a scant seven episodes…and his 1993 collaboration with Richard Lewis, Daddy Dearest, was cancelled after a 13-week tryout).  Creator Aaron Ruben used Rickles’ Navy background (Don was a Seaman First Class on the USS Cyrene during World War II) to fashion a series on which the famed insult comic played Chief Petty Officer Otto Sharkey—a twenty-four year Naval veteran driven to distraction by his company of recruits.  The men under Sharkey were various ethnic stereotypes: jive-talking Daniels (Jeff Hollis), Jewish intellectual Skolnik (David Landsberg), Latino Rodriguez (Richard Beauchamp), and Polish Kowalski (Tom Ruben).  Mignone, an Italian character played by actor Barry Pearl, didn’t get his option renewed for Season 2 and he was replaced by the Greek Apodaca (Philip Simms)—who had appeared briefly in a Season 1 episode, “Sharkey Finds Peace and Quiet.”

You take the good, you take the bad...Charlotte Rae guest-stars in "Punk Rock Sharkey" as the mother of a young girl (Lisa Mordente) who becomes infatuated with the Chief after he breaks up a melee in a bar.

The other big casting change in the second season was replacing Sharkey’s commanding officer Captain Quinlan (played by Elizabeth Allen) with Captain “Buck” Buckner, a by-the-book martinet played by veteran character actor Richard X. Slattery.  I suspect the change was made to make Sharkey more sympathetic: he never really confronted the affable Quinlan (perhaps the producers were concerned about him appearing too chauvinistic) in his trademark antagonistic fashion, so giving him a more formidable adversary in Buckner made more sense from a comedic standpoint.  (Oddly enough, Slattery was mostly bombast and wasn’t able to add any comic nuance to the part; perhaps he had become tired of being typecast in the same roles he had played on series like The Gallant Men and Mister Roberts.)   And yet, during Sharkey’s second season, character fave Beverly Sanders (whom I always remember as Dom DeLuise’s married sister Olive on Lotsa Luck!) made for an engaging Rickles nemesis as CPO Gypsy Koch in three episodes.  (Jonathan Daly’s Lieutenant Whipple was also back for Season Dos, but his skirmishes with Sharkey were de-emphasized—he functioned more as a sniveling “yes man” for Slattery’s Buckner.)

Dr. Chatsworth Osborne, Jr. (Steve Franken) and Dr. Howard Sprague (Jack Dodson) guest star in "Sharkey Flies Over the Cuckoo's Nest"

If you’re old enough (*cough*) to remember when CPO Sharkey originally aired I think you’ll find the show a delightful nostalgia wallow.  Not every episode is a gem, of course, but there are some fitfully amusing entries.  “Operation Frisco” features Sharkey having to share cramped submarine space with his aide-de-camp Seaman Lester Pruitt (Peter Isacksen) and the men in a nice little homage to the stateroom scene from A Night at the Opera.  “Barracks Baby” finds a pregnant woman from Mexico hiding out in Company 144 and about to deliver at the same time a no-nonsense Congresswoman (played by the legendary Pat “Bunny Halper” Carroll) is on the base on an inspection tour.  “Sharkey’s Back Problem” spotlights an uproarious performance from the show’s star when he winds up looped on painkillers for a bad back.

Two old sea salts are reunited in "Sharkey the Actor": that's Billy Sands of McHale's Navy fame playing a tailor (Sands was also a cast member on The Phil Silvers Show).

"You son of a gun!" David "Larry Tate" White guests as an admiral in "Captain's Right Hand Man" (with Jane Connell as Mrs. Admiral).

There are some episodes, however, that have become embarrassingly dated due to their dependence on ethnic humor; “Forget Pearl Harbor” is a particularly egregious example (the normally guileless Pruitt uses slurs like “Jap” and “Nip”—even though it’s not in keeping with his character as an harmless, easygoing rube), but “Sharkey and the South American Way” isn’t much better.  Like the first season release, Sharkey 2 features the following disclaimer on the box: “Warning: Some of the jokes and ethnic references heard in these episodes would most likely not be allowed on network TV today and reflect the tenor of the times.”  (We are talking about the era of Sanford and Son and Chico and the Man, to put all this in perspective.)  In addition, four episodes from Season Two exist only in truncated syndication form (a disclaimer before each of them humorously reads: “Back in the ‘70s, some hockey puck in Beautiful Downtown Burbank somehow misplaced the master video tape for this episode”): “Pruitt’s Paradise,” “It Happened One Night,” “Fear of Flying,” and “The Used-Car Caper.”

Rhonda Bates returns as Lester Pruitt's girlfriend Evelyn in "Pruitt's Paradise"...but she's joined by future Hill Street Blues player Betty Thomas, who plays a female recruit who's also warm for Pruitt's form.

I noted in the earlier review that Sharkey creator Aaron Ruben had a tendency to fall back on his former years as the creator of Gomer Pyle, USMC for inspiration (the Sharkey-Pruitt relationship is a mirror image of the one between Gomer and Sergeant Carter—wonderfully exemplified in Sharkey’s “Pruitt, the Russian Flu-Carrier”)—but he also dips into past episodes of The Phil Silvers Show for show fodder as well (Ruben and Bilko creator Nat Hiken also wrote together for radio’s The Milton Berle Show).  “Seven-Eleven Sharkey” is reminiscent of the Bilko classic “The Con Men” (in the Sharkey version, Sharkey takes on a pair of card sharps—one of them played by Jerry Lewis nemesis Buddy Lester—to win back some money Seaman Kowalski lost) and the Phil Silvers Show entry “Doberman’s Sister” no doubt inspired “Sharkey Meets Pruitt's Sister”—which features not only Isacksen in drag but Landsberg playing both Skolnik and his female sibling (someone forgot to do something about Landsberg’s five-o’clock shadow in the latter instance).  (The Pruitt-in-drag is really just a dream sequence; his actual sister is played by Maureen Arthur.)

Included on the Sharkey Season 2 set is a delightful bonus feature in which four of the show’s cast members—Harrison Page, David Landsberg, Tom Ruben and Barry Pearl—get together with star Rickles backstage at one of his Las Vegas bookings in April of 2015.  Rickles is at his best playing Rickles—he asks Page if he’s still acting and when Page answers in the affirmative Don asks “Why?”—but what struck me the most about the reunion was the tremendous amount of affection and respect all of the men have for one another (Don expresses his regrets to Tom Ruben on his father’s passing—Ruben is Aaron’s son) despite the short-lived run of the series.  The stories they swap about working on the show are often funnier than the actual episodes, and each individual is unabashed in their praise for Don and the wonderful opportunity they received in working alongside him.  (Don humorously asks the group if CPO Sharkey is rerun anywhere; Harrison tells him he has seen the show telecast in Europe.)

Don plays monk Brother Gregory in a sketch from "The Many Sides of Don Rickles"; Greg is technical adviser on a film about his life that's directed by longtime Rickles chum Don "Would you believe?" Adams.

Don being Don constitutes the highlights of the two television specials spotlighted in The Don Rickles TV Specials: Volume 1.  The first, “The Many Sides of Don Rickles,” features guest stars in Don Adams, Harvey Korman and Robert Goulet…and the overall production has kind of a laid-back, Love, American Style-feel to it.  (I watched this with Mom, who joked: “Those sets look like the director [Bud Yorkin] handed someone $4.85.”)  Scripted by Jack Riley (who can be spotted in some of the sketches) and Pat McCormick (along with Carol Burnett Show veterans Kenny Solms and Gail Parent), most of the skits are either mildly amusing or fall completely flat.  The show only really comes to life during some “backstage” interludes (where Don and his guests swap show business anecdotes) and at the end when Rickles participates in a “humor roundtable” with three real-life doctors, allowing Don to be his insulting best.

Another sketch from "The Many Sides" features Ann Morgan Guilbert as Don's frustrated wife.

“Don Rickles: Alive and Kicking” is very much an improvement; the sketches are a little better-written (one of the scribes is Arnie Rosen, who wrote many a Sharkey episode) and there are some nice moments as Don sings and dances (yes—and he’s not bad) with guest star Juliet Prowse and performs comedy alongside the late Anne Meara (which made me tear up considerably).  Rickles also does a skit with Harvey Korman that’s similar to the type of sketches the two of them would due on The Carol Burnett Show (even borrowing the punchline).  There are some surprise appearances from some of Don’s show biz friends (I’ll keep mum so as not to spoil them for you) but again, the comic really shines when he participates in his trademark shtick with the audience during the show’s opening…

…okay, I can spoil this much for you—below the mook with the pink shirt and ginger hair you’ll recognize two familiar TV faces.  One is Tim Conway, and the other is McLean Stevenson—one of the many featured performers on Thrilling Days of Yesteryear’s Doris Day(s) (which I hope to return to one of these days…and no, I have not misplaced the discs).  Don gets McLean’s series right (M*A*S*H) but he mispronounces his name as “McLean Stevens” (I’m willing to cut him some slack, though, because he describes the top of Stevenson’s head as “chicken fat with a part in it”).

This one's for "Grover": future Barney Miller cast member Steve Landesberg appears in the U.N. sketch in "Don Rickles: Alive and Kicking."

“You know, Ivan—you make these sets sound so tantalizing,” I hear you saying right now.  (At least…I hope that’s you—particularly since my meds prescription ran out last week.)  Tell ya what I’m gonna do: I just so happen to have extra copies of CPO Sharkey: The Complete Second Season and The Don Rickles Specials: Volume 1 on hand…and since it’s been ages since I’ve hosted a giveaway here on the blog, I am going to pass both of them along to some lucky member of the TDOY faithful.  All you have to do is send me an e-mail at igsjrotr(at)gmail(dot)com with “Don Rickles giveaway” in the subject header and something devastatingly witty like “I want to win this contest, ya hockey puck!”  (You don’t have to include your snail mail right away if you’re not feeling lucky but keep in mind that I’ll be able to send out the sets quicker if you do.)  The deadline for the giveaway will be 11:59pm EDT this October 15 (Thursday), which coincidentally is my BBFF Stacia’s natal anniversary (stop by and wish her a happy one—you’ll be glad you did!).  The contest is limited to participants living in the U.S. only because I’ve been to the new Winterville post office and the person doing the strip searches for packages going to Canada is an ex-wrestler named “Gladys.”

Remember: you can’t win if you don’t enter!  (Yes, I know that’s patently obvious—but I couldn’t think of any other way to close this out.)  Good luck!

…just gimme that countryside…

You’ve no doubt noticed that things have been a bit quiet on the blog of late…and for that, I deeply apologize.  As in the case of past absences, there is a long and involved tale explaining my extended disappearance…so I invite you to turn out your lights…that’s right…lights out…everybody… (Okay, it’s really not all that scary…I just got carried away.)

A few days into the month of June, the ‘rents and I received a visit from the real estate broker who’s served as the intermediary in our dealings with the landlord.  The landlord lives quite a ways away from our rented digs in Athens, and so relies on this woman to handle all matters regarding the house.  Well, that’s the official explanation—I’ve long suspected the guy was just an asshole.  He gives new meaning to the term “absentee landlord.”

Or perhaps I should say “gave.”  After exchanging pleasantries in that typical fashion of Southern ladies, the broker drops the bomb on us.  My parents weren’t able to come to an agreement regarding renewal of the lease—they wanted the landlord to assume the financial responsibility for the truly decrepit condition of the outside pipes on the property, which he patently refused to do despite owning the house—and so the broker agreed to let us rent the place on a month-to-month basis since we had demonstrated that we were damn fine tenants in the four years we’d been living there.  Apparently, however, we weren’t that damn fine—she was there to inform us that he had decided to sell the place, and we had sixty days to vacate.

My mother didn’t take this news well at all.  She’s never liked the house from the moment we moved in (or so she says—“Your father insisted we rent this dump”) but she wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about packing up all our shit and relocating…mostly due to the fact that we no longer have the strength or stamina to successfully accomplish this goal.  Nevertheless, we had to go; fortunately for us, my sister-in-law would be in the Athens area to help us find a new Rancho Yesteryear.  My nephew Davis would be spending his first week at summer camp in the North Carolina area, and this allowed Katie to donate her much-appreciated time to find new lodgings.

The new Rancho Yesteryear.

We set our sights on a place in Winterville, Georgia.  Located in a peaceful community that brags about its status as “the City of Marigolds,” it’s about twenty minutes from the old Rancho Yesteryear…and though it’s a bit smaller than the old digs (and sadly, the rent is more) Mom fell in love with the place.  (Particularly since it’s equipped with a fireplace.  Yes, I realize having a blazing fireplace down South is insane, but I never claimed my mother wasn’t crazy.)

We also made plans to be out of the old place by the first of July…because we were damned if we were going to give that essobee any more of our rent dollars.  Sisters Debbie and Kat flew in to perform above and beyond the call of duty, and had it not been for their efforts we’d probably still be in the old place…sitting around naked.  We got most of our crap out on June 30—we even had the guy who moved us the last time return for an encore (he saw me when he came over for an estimate and shouted “I remember you—the guy with the DVDs!”)—and though we technically stayed over an extra day to have a cleaning crew come in and tidy up, the real estate broker did not charge us any extra pro-rated rent.  (For reasons that are still unexplained, the landlord did not allow her to list the house for sale and we kind of think by that point the broker had run out of f**ks to give with regards to the joint.)

Even with the amount of help we received in the move (for which we are most appreciative), things were not always smooth sailing.  For example, we couldn’t take our AT&T U-Verse with us to the new home (even though U-Verse could be real putzes at times), so we had to look for a new television provider.  We went with Dish (only because there was a Dish dish already in the yard of the new place), and not only had problems with the installation (the first guy couldn’t find the house) but learned to our chagrin that they block many of the Atlanta Braves ballgames on the weekends.  (When I called to ask about this bullsh*t, the customer service rep swore to me this was not Dish’s doing.  Apparently she did not think I was capable of researching this issue online.)

The Internet problems were just as bad.  Dish doesn’t offer Internet access; instead they farm it out to Windstream.net…who did not get a glowing recommendation from the guy who finally installed our Dish equipment.  (He didn’t have trouble finding the house.)  The Windstream people left a wireless modem on the carport of the new house, and while I stupefyingly managed to hook up the equipment, they had to send a second guy out to complete the installation because the phone jack wasn’t connected.  (They did not tell me this in the “Hola! We were here while you were out!” note they left with the modem.)

But the biggest clusterfudges involved our trash and sewer.  We had to contract trash pickup to a private concern because we now live south of Pixley, and on the first day of collection they drove right by the house.  (I thought at first that I didn’t get the cart and all our crap down to the curb in time…but when they passed us by the second week without taking the refuse I had to call the trash people and inform them of their mistake.  To their credit, the guy who came out to collect our garbage was quite nice and most apologetic.)

Then the pizza de resistance.  Saturday, July 4th, sewage-y water starts backing up in both the tub in the main bathroom and the shower stall in the smaller bath off my Mom and Dad’s room.  It’s brackish, smelly water, filled with leaves…and it would have to happen on the freaking Fourth of July; we call our new landlady, who tells us she’ll have her guy out to look at the problem as soon as he returns her call.

So we couldn’t use the plumbing for nearly two days, and staying in a hotel while the crisis abated was out of the question because we had already done that due to a similar problem that occurred during the last two days we spent in the old house.  (We were inches away from saying “this is not our problem” but we felt it wouldn’t be right when the cleaning people came in.)  You haven’t lived until your eighty-three-year-old father is having to squat waste solids into a trash bag-lined bucket, which he then stored in a closet located on our new carport.  Mom and I eventually had to take Dad’s “deposits” to a dumpster at a nearby Golden Pantry—whose manager graciously agreed to let us dump our trash during the Great Trash Abandonment Crisis.  (We now refer to the carport enclosure as “the dookie closet.”)

The landlady had to send “her guy” out because the new house is equipped with a septic tank.  The septic tank guy mentioned to us that he had told Landlady of a troublesome pipe that needed replaced in April (which turned out to be the reason for the July Fourth backup) after ruling out that the problem was caused by some torrential rains that fell during the days of our move.  The pipe was replaced, but at the risk of making a horrible pun that woman is officially on my sh*t list.  (I might be able to control my bowels but asking elderly people to do so is outrageous.)

These are just a few of the highlights of our moving adventure.  We’re gradually returning to a sense of normalcy, and though I wish our problems with both Dish and Windstream weren’t a continual headache both Mom and Dad are quite happy at the new Rancho Yesteryear.  (There’s a stand down the road that sells farm-fresh produce, and the ‘rents are positively giddy with the vegetables—Dad: “These tomatoes taste like tomatoes!”)  I’ll miss living in the Classic City (what can I say—I’m a city boy), but I suspect our new adventures in Hooterville will provide much wacky fodder for the blog.

At any rate, I hope to resume normal blogging here soon at Thrilling Days of Yesteryear.  Thanks for your patience during the unplanned leave of absence.