Opinion

Now, most of you don't know that my Miss Trixie was friends with Lady Bird Johnson, former First Lady of these great United States and the widow of our 36th President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Miss Trixie knew Mrs. Johnson long after LBJ died, of course, but she still heard stories from Mrs. Johnson and other alums from the Johnson administration.

I think most of you can relate to the use — and probably overuse — of Facebook by most people. As soon as you log in, Facebook asks “What’s on your mind” as a daily reminder to post any and everything that crosses the old noggin. And the main problem is people will tell you.

I realize you have to be a tad older to recall the phrase “I know nothing …NOTHING!” made popular on a sitcom called “Hogan’s Heroes.” “Hogan’s Heroes” was a weekly show about some Allied prisoners of war in a German camp whereby the prisoners got by with all kinds of sabotage and mischief right under their captors' noses. The goofy Kommandant Klink ran the POW camp aided by his trusty yet bumbling Sergeant Schultz.

Anyone that knows anything about Miss Trixie can tell you that she is a whirlwind of activity all year long. I guarantee you, the grass never grows under her feet for very long if she can help it.

I am sure if you ever played tag you have heard the phrase “ready or not.” The way it worked was all the players in the game would run away and hide somewhere and the person that was “it” would count to ten or whatever and then look up and say ready or not here I come. What followed was a hectic search for those who had hidden.

As soon as you read BYOB, I bet you thought Ol’ Dutch had fallen off the wagon and was suggesting that you “Bring Your Own Booze” to some pending future social event. And that is what the acronym has meant probably since Jesus turned the water into wine as He only did that once leaving future weddings on the dry side unless someone snuck in a fifth.

Just this past weekend Miss Trixie drug Ol’ Dutch to the annual Creede Colorado Rock and Mineral show to look at the pretty rocks. And it's not like I am not interested but I have a pretty good collection of said specimens myself and so tramping up and down the aisles and having to talk to people is kind of a stretch for this old man. Oh, I don't mind once I get there and actually, I found some great people this time to talk to, so it was definitely a win in the end. But I think Ol’ Dutch is more like an old water pump these days that takes a little bit of priming to get me started.

Miss Trixie reminded me today that this is the 10th anniversary of my starting to write for the Valley papers. Since that time, I became syndicated, and it allowed me to meet many good people — and a few not-so-good ones — across the country. It's been a wild ride sometimes as you have traveled along with Ol’ Dutch and Miss Trixie on all kinds of adventures from the headwaters of the Rio Grande river to the outlet of the same into the Gulf of Mexico. Not a few people have told me that “it seems like a lot longer” when I told them it was my 10th year.

I am sure that most of you have heard the old phrase, “No good deed goes unpunished.” You also know by now that Ol’ Dutch likes to include some background of the origin of such phrases here so that you, my readers, will have some intellectual-sounding fodder to bring up at the next social meeting you attend. So, I went to the source for everything, aka The Internet, and there seems to be some schism about who came up with such wisdom.

There may be a few readers who can remember the original game show Password invented by CBS Network in 1961. In its long multi-year run, it has called NBC and ABC home, as well, and continues today. For those of you who are not familiar with the game, it consists of two teams of two people. One of which is a well-known celebrity and the other one is chosen from a field of willing contestants.

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