Shave and a haircut

When I was in high school, one of my family’s favorite movies was “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.”

The movie mixed live action with animation in a somewhat tarnished golden age of Hollywood setting. Other than the main villain being incredibly creepy, it remains a fun way to spend two hours on a rainy afternoon.

I was thinking about the movie on Monday evening. We got our roof replaced this week and the crew started early in the morning ripping the old roof off and by the time I got home from work were making steady progress on getting the new shingles in place, pounding away well into dusk.

Like most middle-aged men, I felt a strong compulsion to go out and supervise the crew working and draw on my shallow pool of knowledge of spending a summer doing roofing about 34 years ago when I was a teenager, to see if they were doing it right.

I was able to fight down this urge, because unless you are an actor on a stage, having someone watch you work is just weird. More importantly, I was raised that if you see something that needs to be done you should do it and didn’t want my mother’s ghost showing up to lecture me about gawking at other people working without lending a hand.

My wife had a different reaction and was getting very stressed and anxious about the workers being on the roof and hearing them move around and drag their air hoses. Having grown up in a house with a large family, I am less bothered by noises that occur when I can’t see what is causing them. I can understand how this is not the case for those who grew up in small families where weird noises would be cause for alarm. My wife ended up going to over to spend time visiting with her mother until the work crew packed up for the night.

When it comes to scampering over rooftops or carrying heavy bundles of shingles, my pitching in would most likely have resulted in a trip to the emergency room or at the very least multiple visits to the chiropractor.

Instead, I puttered around inside the house while hearing the steady beat of the workers’ hammers going thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.

There is a scene in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” where Roger is tricked to come out of his hiding place by the bad guys tapping out the beats to “Shave and a haircut,” to which Roger is compelled to jump out and finish yelling out, “Two bits!”

I am not sure what is says about my parenting, but the primary observation of both my children was the frustration that the rhythm of the roofers hammers never finished with the “two bits” portion.

*** Reader Donno Van Dake of Curtiss stopped by The Star News office this week with a poem written in 1845 by Julia Fletcher Carney. I thought the message of the poem was a good one to share.

Little Things

Little drops of water, Little grains of sand, Make the mighty ocean And the pleasant land. So the little moments, Humble though they be, Make the mighty ages Of Eternity.

So the little errors Lead the soul away From the paths of virtue Far in sin to stray.

Little deeds of kindness, Little words of love, Help to make earth happy Like the Heaven above.

Brian Wilson is News Editor at The Star News. Contact Brian at BrianWilson@centralwinews.com.