Crazy Old Lady in a Small Town Diner, June 8, 2024

There's a little-remembered 1937 film entitled, Sh! The Octopus, in which the little-remembered but solid bit-part player Elspeth Dudgeon undergoes a memorable, mind-bending transformation from kindly old lady to evil hag in the click of a frame.

On our way to Toronto, we stopped for brunch in a familiar small town diner about a half-hour out. It has the expected trimmings: friendly service, humble but home-cooked food, and small town characters. A booth away, a grandmotherly woman was speaking with a young man who was taking his breakfast at the counter. His dog had been sprayed by a skunk, and he was wondering about the best way to remove the scent. The waitress chimed in: it doesn't have to be tomato juice, but a homespun mixture of common products which she rattled off. The old woman narrowed her eyes to repressed schoolmarm stern and said, "I had a dog who was skunked twice. Not once but

It has been over two months since I came back to the United States, and if you are wondering how long it took between my plane touching down, and casing a Dollar Tree for ironic Young Adult novels, the answer is about 30 hours. Having a never-ending supply of free-to-cheap books is one of the highlights of being back.

Speaking of timelines: 12 years ago, while writing about a Nancy Drew book, I mentioned that the series was 82 years old. Meaning it is currently 94

She once found a handwritten note, inside of a shoe

sitting in a box in an antique shop 

 smudged blue ink,  written in a language she did not know 

She threw away the shoe, but kept the note for years,  until finally 

Curosity led her to a library, who sent her to a translator 

The first person deferred,  recommending a retired college