Flanagan's Hangout and Memory Gym

Life's rearview mirror ought to have the same kind of warning as cars'. "Caution: Objects may look (insert your choice: bigger; rosier; more fun; tastier) than they really were."

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"Give that man a Dewey button!" A common saying in the 1950s, you never hear it anymore. Background: Thomas Dewey was the Republican candidate for president in 1948. Most polls had him coasting to victory over incumbent President Harry Truman. The voters said different... Keep this bit of history in mind… Continue

A recent column about jump rope, jacks and the jingles we sang while playing these games brought in a couple of notes worth sharing. Here goes: “When I was a kid growing up in Rockland in the 1940s, every girl in my neighborhood would play “Donkey” up against the Madden kids’ house,” recalled Marilyn Shearer of Attleboro. “You bounced a big ball on the house while going through the alphabet, like ‘A, my name is Alice and I live in Alabama and I sell… Continue

When Sun Chronicle advertising representative Wayne Chapman stopped in for his Sunday morning breakfast at the Black Bear Cafe several weeks ago, part of his routine when he goes to his summer house in Naples, Maine, the counterman told him: “You left 10 minutes too early yesterday.” How’s that? Chapman was wondering. And… Continue

So, we learned during the opening ceremony for the Olympics, the four great Chinese inventions are paper, gunpowder, movable type, and the compass.

So what's so great about that stuff?

You want a great invention, the greatest ever -- in my opinion, anyway? It's the automatic dishwasher.

Wheels and pulleys are great, don't get me wrong. But the most significant thing about their invention is that they laid the way for the ultimate invention of the dishwasher. And yeah, I know… Continue

If, as I read in one of Rusty D’Arconte’s recent columns, the word “pescatarian” has been coined to describe “a vegetarian who eats fish”:

* Were my children “seminarians” back in the days when they would eat no more than half their vegetables?

* Is a meat lover who requires that his steak be cut into equal-sized pieces a “sectarian.”

* Conversely, if you eat an orange or tangerine whole, rather than divide it into pieces, are you a “non-sectarian?”

8 And is my daughter, who… Continue