Sunday Roast, Sunday, October 2nd – Relax, Everyone, It’s Sunday

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Missy gets comfy

For most of my life, Sunday meant relaxing, watching This Week With David Brinkley, slowly reading the Sunday papers, the comics, working on the NY Times crossword puzzle. Sunday dinner in the fall was always scheduled around the football games.

My dad would sit in ‘his’ chair, I would sit on the couch with my feet up on the arm of dad’s chair; during the football games, dad would sometimes tell me about some of the players who he had been following from their college careers, and his hand would hold and warm my feet as he kept my attention. Mum and I would trade the crossword puzzle back and forth throughout, as each of us would get stumped by a word now and then. The aroma of Sunday dinner would permeate the house until we couldn’t wait to eat.

What are YOUR Sunday memories?

This is our Sunday open thread. What’s on your mind today?

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120 thoughts on “Sunday Roast, Sunday, October 2nd – Relax, Everyone, It’s Sunday”

  1. Ah memories. We had our big meal after church, sometimes in a restaurant even though my mom hated to spend the money. Afterwards dad watched sports in the den and I sat sewing by the fire. I had a little cardboard sewing box and embroidered potholders and stuff, many of which I found my mom still had when she died. At 6PM Disney came on and we ate a sandwich dinner off those metal folding TV trays while watching. Thank-you Jane for stirring these memories, I’m now starting my day with a sweet feeling.

    • Glad I could stir up sweet memories for you, Oustanding. I swear, I can close my eyes and still feel the warmth of my dad’s hand on my feet, it was such a habit of his whenever I put my feet up on his chair. It didn’t matter what subject he was going on about, as his stories were always long and detailed (his memories of football and baseball players and games were amazingly detailed), regardless he would keep his hand on my feet the whole time. A little thing, perhaps, but vividly remembered.

  2. The challenge of Sundays was, to me back in the old days, to find a way to avoid having to go to church. When I was a lad, my dad went to church only to please my mother; my brother and sister and I went because our mother insisted. I was the youngest, but by the time I was in my early teens and my older sibs were in college, my dad and I figured out various ways to avoid church in favor of some necessary duty it took two of us to accomplish at his bakery, things that couldn’t be done on any of the six days per week the bakery was open. By the time I was a senior in HS he and I could typically manage 2, sometimes even 3, Sundays per month where we just couldn’t get to church. Ten years later, when they were retired and living in Sun City AZ and my wife and I had bought a home in Phoenix, he and I kept it up. I was employed full time so the only days I had for landscaping and working on the house were on weekends. Pop and I worked out a deal: I’d call him on Saturdays and ask if he could give me a hand on Sunday mornings, and he’d always show up right around the time church for them in Sun City would have started. We didn’t do much, usually just sat on the patio with a pot of coffee as we solved the world’s problems. Till near noon when he’d head home for lunch. For mum, the church in Sun City was barely more than a block away … walking distance, so all was well.

    Now that I’m old and decrepit, I no longer have to scheme … but if I had to, I would!

    • Of course, growing up Catholic, the day would always start with going to Church – sometimes my dad would go to the 8:00 mass, then mum would take the rest of us to the 9:30 mass. Most Sundays, though, the whole famdamily went to the 9:30 mass, and afterwards, we and practically everyone else who attended that mass would frantically try to get out of the parking lot in order to get to the local grocery store, Helen and Ed’s, as quickly as possible. Helen and Ed’s (literally a “mom-and-pop” grocery) always had a big table right inside their entrance, full of various donuts, pastries and CRULLERS that were the best in the world. It was a tiny little store, and the place would always be crowded with all of us church-goers. Eventually they moved to slightly bigger digs just down the street from the original store, and Helen and Ed’s daughter Brenda now runs it under the family name “Kobacker’s” – and once in a while, I stop in to see if they have any crullers, which they still sometimes have, although they’ve been relegated to a much smaller table toward the back of the store. But I still have a hard time going there, as the place brings back SO many memories of my childhood.

  3. Sunday memories.. I remember getting up and getting ready for Sunday School and church service, sometimes going to my grandmothers afterwards for Sunday dinner and her killer roast beef and potatoes, or coming home to my mom’s fried chicken, and then going back to church Sunday evening for another round Sunday service and singing hymns for a couple of hours. What I remember most though is my dad taking the Sunday paper into our family’s only bathroom, staying in there for at least an hour reading, also sneaking a few cigarettes while he read and took care of his ‘business’, and then none of the rest of us being able to use the bathroom for the rest of the morning (or even walk down the hall in that part of the house..). What a weird thing to remember..

    • Funny, my dad NEVER brought the newspaper or other reading material into the bathroom, that was a ‘man’ thing that I never encountered until adulthood.

      One of dad’s other ‘Sunday’ things was to polish and shine his shoes for Monday, and he would always ask if any of us kids needed our school shoes polished. So my ‘Sunday’ memories also include his laying out an old newspaper with all of the little tins of Kiwi polish and his shoe brushes, and the rhythmic sound of him brushing everyone’s shoes..

      • This isn’t a Sunday memory, but I remember getting up early with my dad before he went to work. I watched him shave and polish his shoes and brass belt buckle. We didn’t talk much, although sometimes I’d tell him about last nights dreams. It was nice to have him all to myself on those mornings, because it never happened otherwise.

  5. Seriously off topic here, but I have been listening to music for the last half hour. My friend turned me on to this guy who is from the University of Oregon (Peter Hollens). The songs I love the best are “Poor Wayfaring Stranger”, Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way”, Billy Joel’s “Lullaby”, “Seasons of Love” from RENT, and Adele’s “Turning Tables”. Wow.. I could listen to this stuff all day long.

    Here is his Peter Hollens Channel on YouTube.

  6. We weren’t a church-going family. Sundays for us was a big breakfast day. Dad would get the Sunday papers and we would have English muffins, toast and bacon (the others would have scrambled eggs.) On days when my Dad cooked the bacon, he would always cook the whole package,so there was lots to go around. I guess he liked it, too, and he figured if he was cooking, he would make enough for himself and my brother and me. Then we’d lay on the living room floor reading the Sunday comics, trading different papers, sometimes scheming to make sure we got the paper that had our favorite comics that weren’t in all of them. Dad seemed to like Prince Valiant for some reason, though I thought it was one of the lamer comics. Sometimes there were just three or four panels on a full page, with little dialog. And it was a serial one, so if you didn’t read it continuously, you were lost. Then it was baseball or football (depending on the season) on TV, unless Dad decided there was some chore that he didn’t feel like doing all by himself, so we’d have to help. In the evening, after “Wonderful World of Disney” and “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom”, we would try to convince Dad that he really, really wanted to get Carvel ice cream, and we usually succeeded. That was our Sundays growing up. At least, that’s how I prefer to remember them. :)

    • Wayne, I had forgotten about “Wonderful World of Disney”. When we weren’t at SUnday night service we never missed watching it! That was a good memory.

        • And wasn’t there some western show or western theater that ran on Sunday afternoons? I remember the Borax commercials, and Jane Russell and her “Cross Your Heart” Playtex Bra commercials.. Was it Wagon Train? Something else? I remember my dad kicked back in his recliner watching those westerns.

          • I honestly don’t remember. Dad was a big time John Wayne fan, so we always had to watch those movies. It was strange. Any time a movie other than a John Wayne movie was on that we had already watched, his response was “We’ve already seen that one.” But he had no problem watching John Wayne movies over and over. But we rarely watched the western TV shows, unless you count “McCloud” and the Sunday Mystery Movie as a “western”.

  7. I hated Sundays.
    I had a paper route and the Sunday paper was huge.
    This was back when kids delivered papers on bikes
    I would be up at 5 and got to the corner and waited for the bundles.
    If the papers were late the phone would start ringing and I knew exactly who it was every time.
    “Where’s my paper”?
    Not so much as a good moring, straight to where’s my paper?
    It turned out that there was a guy that was driving around behind us stealing our papers.

  8. Sorry to keep going on about this guy, but it’s the same guy I posted earlier. His name is Peter Hollens. He’s an Oregonian and a student from the University of Oregon.
    This is a cover of Billy Joel’s “Lullaby”. He sings ALL the parts, and it is totally a cappella.

    So smooth, so peaceful. Nice.
    Now I’m done talking about him.. ;-)

    • He is awesome. Took Taylor to DePauw in Indiana for an overnight visit. She was there before singing for one professor. They treated her like she was an all star athlete and she is ecstatic. Now all she needs is a big fat scholarship.

  9. Sundays pre-high school were very strange. We would all go to 9am Mass and after that it was something of a race. Being just a wee younker I wasn’t privy to the plans but one of two things would happen. Either we were all packed up and on the road before 11 or Mom (Dad in the summer on the grill) would be whomping up some sort of huge meal. I always looked forward to Sundays because it was a guaranteed good feeding day.

    On the days we hit the road we would be off to one of my aunts or uncles farms over in the next county. Or maybe a wedding at one of the big dance halls that were still around. On the days we stayed home, at least one family of rels would show up and we would host the doings. Happened dang near every Sunday from when I can remember (somewhere around 1st grade when Dad quit his OTR driving job) until I was old enough to be off with my own friends.

  10. The Cheneys (Liz and the Dick) think Obama owes them and this country an apology:

    Yeah, right..
    From Dick:

    “The thing I am waiting for is for the administration to go back and correct something they said two years ago, when they criticized us for quote overreacting to the events of 9/11,” Cheney said. “They in effect said we had walked away from our ideals, taking policy contrary to our ideals when we had enhanced interrogation techniques. They have clearly moved in the direction of taking robust action when they feel it is justified. In this case, it was. They need to go back and reconsider what the president said in Cairo.”

    From Liz:

    “He slandered the nation,” Liz Cheney added, “and I think he owes an apology to the American people. Those are the policies that kept us safe.”

    They were both thrilled though with the bombing targeting Anwar Al_Awlaki. Thrilled. Oh, and then there was this..:

    Cheney took issue with Obama’s speech on Sunday. “We were never torturing anyone in the first place,” he told CNN’s Candy Crowley. “He said we walked away from our basic fundamental ideals. That simply wasn’t the case. What he said then was inaccurate especially now in light of what they are doing with policy.”

    So, now he is backtracking saying they never tortured? Or just that they don’t call what they were doing torture.. You can’t have it both ways.

    • I do love their delusions. Policies that worked didn’t prevent 911, didn’t capture any significant terrorist leader, kept our troops in two police actions for 7 years. The Right has an odd definition of effective and working.

    • They don’t consider what they did to be “torture” because torture is illegal and their lawyers told them what they were doing was legal. I forget the proper name of this type of logical “reasoning”, but it is, at the very least, delusional and self-serving.

      As for Liz’s assertion that “those policies kept us safe”, there are two things to say about that. One, they didn’t prevent further attacks. And two, they were as effective as me jumping up and down in my living room. Correlation does not imply causation.

    • I hope tere is a Hell so Cheney can spend eternity there. Besides if we know who has the info and deserves to be tortured then we know what they have and why do we have to torture them?

    • “He said we walked away from our basic fundamental ideals. That simply wasn’t the case.

      Of course it “simply wasn’t the case” — because those buggers never HAD any ‘fundamental ideals’ other than to screw everyone who happened to walk by (if, of course, that is worthy of being called a “fundamental ideal” even in jest).

      I wish Cheney’s batteries would go dead.

    • We didn’t over react to 911? So just how many other countries invaded two different countries after any terrorist attack? About the only thing that might top that would be if Israel nukes Iran.

    • He’s a twisted, evil, damned poor excuse for a human being. (that he’s of the Repugnant Party is fitting – evil, devious, deceptive are their ways)

      Cheney: We only waterboarded two or three people

      “First of all, these were not American citizens,” he said, “Secondly, it was people like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who were a handful, 2 or 3, that actually got waterboarded. Third, we had good reason to believe they had information that we could only get from them and that they knew more than anyone else.”

      Cheney OK’d harsh CIA tactics December 16, 2008|Greg Miller

      Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that he was directly involved in approving severe interrogation methods used by the CIA, and that the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should remain open indefinitely.

    • Pathetic attempt to alter how history will remember the Dick. Sorry guy, if you’re remembered at all it will be as an evil and manipulative little man. G. W. will fair better in the historical record than you.

        • Yeah, Missy is a sweet girl. Besides our first cat, Becca, Missy is the only cat that we adopted who wasn’t a stray or born in our backyard. During the year from hell, when we had to have our beautiful Lissa put to sleep, I stayed in the waiting room at the vet’s while Wayne went in with Lissa – we had had my little Mousie put to sleep a few weeks before, and I just couldn’t bear it. So I stood by the kitten cage, and Missy came over to play with me. We took her home on my impulse.

      • Shayne, nice to read you – best of all great to see that noble wolf gravatar back in charge!

  12. The Cheney Tag Team is unconstitutional. Having to be subjected to their hypocrisy definitely falls under the ‘Cruel and unusual punishment’.

  14. Thoughts on a Sunday:

    “In the present we have only one day at a time, each offering a minute at a time. But all the days of the past will come to your call: you can detain and inspect them at your will—something which the preoccupied have no time to do. It is the mind which is tranquil and free from care which can roam through all the stages of its life: the minds of the preoccupied, as if harnessed in a yoke, cannot turn round and look behind them. So their lives vanish into an abyss, and just as it is no use pouring any amount of liquid into a container without a bottom to catch and hold it, so it does not matter how much time we are given if there is nowhere for it to settle; it escapes through the cracks and holes of the mind,”

    http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/voices-in-time/back-to-the-future.php

  15. If Bush & Co. did not torture, then kindly explain what Bush did to the English Language?

  16. Isn’t one of the indicators of Alzheimer’s the inability to accurately recall recently past events?

    And isn’t propaganda the dissemination of information designed to change the recall of past events?

    Holy Crap! The Right is trying to give us all Alzheimers! And we thought AIDS was insidious.

  17. via LGF
    [video cameras placed in northern Indonesia’s mountain jungles]

    Eyes on Leuser August -Follow our quest to film rare and elusive species of the Leuser Ecosystem.

  18. It just occurred to me that somewhere down the line one of these Republican contestants is going to have to go mano-a-mano with the President in debates. (or mano-a-mujer). Huntsman would have a chance. Romney a much smaller one. The rest, it would be like watching SNL.

    • Maybe. There is no law that says the nominees have to participate in a debate, and the Republic base would root for their candidate for avoiding a debate with that smartass muslim ni**er–the Rep candidate will probably stick to “debates” with the gang on FauxNews.

      Even if they did agree to a debate with Obama, anything short of a complete shit-your-pants meltdown will prove they “won”.

      • I’m thinking if they agreed we could almost guarantee the shit your pants meltdown. And if they don’t agree, they will have nada.

    • That is fabulous news but those folks are going to be in serious doodoo once their commands find them. Active military personnel are not to engage in political activities, especially in uniform.

      • mea culpa. Reading deeper, it is vets. Rock on. Maybe the NYPD will get to think twice about manhandling protesters. Almost a reverse Kent State.

      • I believe they’re veterans, not active duty. And they’re daring the NYPD: “If they want to get to some protesters so they can mace them, they will have to get through the Fucking Marine Corps first.”

  20. This is a complete change of subject, but it made me so happy I had to share it. I’ve got an extra pig and my church has raised the money to pay the slaughterhouse to make it up, which they’re doing for half price. Next week the food pantry will have almost 300 llbs of sausage to give away. :)

  21. 700 arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge yesterday from an extension of the OccupyWallStreet protest.

    Who knew jasmine could bloom in America in October?

  22. They ignored Madison, blew it off. Now it’s Wall Street. Bank Street America. The dilettantes should be getting worried. The people are taking to the streets. Hasn’t happened in almost 40 years. Wake a sleeping giant and you will find yourself…

    • Please let this be true. So many folks are facing such a bleak future if something doesn’t change.

      • OCCUPY TOGETHER

        Welcome to OCCUPY TOGETHER, an unofficial hub for all of the events springing up across the country in solidarity with Occupy Wall St. As we have followed the news on facebook, twitter, and the various live feeds across the internet, we felt compelled to build a site that would help spread the word as more protests organize across the country. We hope to provide people with information about events that are organizing, ongoing, and building across the U.S. as we, the 99%, take action against the greed and corruption of the 1%.

        We’re doing our part way out west:

        Occupy San Jose
        BRING TENTS! BRING SLEEPING BAGS! BRING SIGNS! BRING AN OPEN MIND! THE MOVEMENT HAS BEGUN

    • Crap, unless you have better eyes than me, which wouldn’t be difficult, the ellipses at the end of my post has a link.

  23. Picture Our World: Raven helps photographer nab grand prize

    In stunning contrast, a raven sits against the winter backdrop of Yosemite. The picture’s photographer(“Jerry” Burke of La Selva Beach)called the bird a “bonus element.” Our judges called it the winning factor in the first Picture Our World travel photo contest.

    “Yosemite at Snowfall.”

    • Take the time to look through the slide shows of the other Winners, Honorable Mentions, and Notable Entries – the fifth one of the Notable Entries is a wonderful picture of a ‘baby penguin on a mission’! Adorable!

  24. America is a fascinating country. Just when you think you have it bought, when you think there aren’t anymore people smart enough to see the scam, it tends to bite you in the ass. Hitler thought he had Germany down cold and he was much closer there. And he still lost.

    Americans aren’t 1930 Germans. Well, at least about 75% aren’t. What worked in Germany in the 30′s, won’t work in America in the 21st century.

  25. Since TP now seems to be immune to sarcasm…

    I believe I have found the answer. If we want to make America strong again we need to find ‘some people’ and send them elsewhere. It isn’t the Muslims or the illegals who are wrecking our country, it is clearly ‘some people’.

    And we need to press the candidates who are talking about ‘some people’ so they can identify them so we can deal with this problem. Somes are obviously much more dangerous than illegals and Islamic terrorists.

    We need to find these somes and deal with them in a judicious manner.

    • TP: where the trolls still patrol; the peddlers still comment about their crap for sale – or the exorbitant amount of money to be made from one scheme or another.

      I don’t find a smooth flowing of exchange over there – humor loses in translation and as you are pointing out – sarcasm isn’t easy to throw or catch.

    • As to “some people” – there are just too many Repugnant/Teapottiers – although there must be an uninhabited island large enough for all that stupidity.

  26. ‘Some’ people are definitely going to have an impact on the next election. That is Faux’s job. They are tuned into and peddling ‘some people’ every broadcast. Most people won’t catch that ‘some people’ actually don’t exist. They are how the Right peddles their propaganda. A mythical majority, praising Jesus, oiling guns and kissing Koch.

    The problem is the not so mythical majority that is staging protests across the country, in major cities against banksters are getting harder to bury in the news broadcasts. Faux and Koch and the Repubs are about to get buried by real grassroots uprising. And right at the start of the real campaign season.

  27. I really want to hear pRick Perry and his comments on the protests. And all the Repub candidates. I want to hear how having American citizens protesting in the streets over policies that benefit the banksters is something to ignore. I want to hear the Republicans who have been claiming to listen to the American people explain how this sort of movement occurs.

    I know some of the answers. They include words like socialist, communist, Marxist, fascist, and probably a few ists rational people would find interesting. Lots of real scary stuff one can dredge up from the past.

  28. Another thing the Right seems to ignore. The more people who have no job, the more people who will take to the streets. We already have a substantial number of people who live in the streets. Add people who weren’t there before and are running out of options.

    Think about it. The rich are about 2% of the population. The seriously poor and destitute, maybe 8%? 12%? And now we are taking the poor bastards who were just hanging on and sending them down through medical bankruptcy, lost jobs, parents who had just too much to qualify for dirt poor when they died.

    Shit yeah, vote Republican and watch any program go straight down the toilet.

  29. Anyone here ever read David Morrel’s ‘First Blood’ novel? Not the campy piece of trash Stallone made into a movie. America today is the difference. The book ended. Morrel did a great job of telling the tale.

    The movie didn’t. It opened the door to crap. John Rambo in the book could never have gone on to do what Hollywood portrayed. Hollywood raped the book. First Blood as a novel was pretty damn good. First Blood and all the crap that followed from Hollywood was pure unadulterated crap.

  30. It is Sunday and I am on something of a roll. Might not be considered a a good thing but what the heck. Stephen King. ‘Salem’s Lot’ has to be one of the absolute best, definitive vampire stories ever written. ‘Carrie’ was also a primo work. I could praise every word the man wrote before ‘Cujo’. After that, I don’t know what happened but I haven’t been able to appreciate anything he wrote. ‘Night Shift’ and ‘Different Seasons’ are two of the best collections of short stories in any genre.

      • Ebb, one of the things that might actually save America is people who can discuss literature. Or sports (as much as I hate that one). Anything that brings Americans together. Anything that brings people together in the name of peace. Anything else needs to be flushed.

        • Hell, I used to talk baseball with Exley at TP, since we were both Mets fans. That was about all that we had in common, but it made for respectful and often humorous exchanges between us.

        • On a bit of a different level: observing Peregrines in an urban setting..actually in any setting.
          The historic Water Tower is ‘headquarters’ for a wintering falcon dubbed “Lady”. Last year she had companion wintering tiercel dubbed “Laird”. Not a bonded pair – just hanging out for the winter.

          Lady has returned to the delight of many. Laird – not yet or he may not at all.

          [With that background here's where we gather to discuss birds. and actually any other subject]

          We birders will sit and visit/watch Lady.
          Passers-by will inquire as to why we stare so long at the Tower:
          Our pointing out “Lady” as she sits and preens invokes interest and the questions just pour: “Are they rare?” “Why did she choose the Tower?”. “Will she nest there?”
          The questions get answered and when next we see these same people it’s: ” We’re keeping an eye on her.” ” We have seen her go on a hunt.” “Thanks for letting us know to look up.”

          People are proud – they are enthusiastic – it brings a common subject!

          Hooda, you are correct – people gather, in the name of peace. People gather in a common bond – even when they never knew that bond sits 100′ – 130′ feet above the ground. :Looking up (to the Tower) is the new phrase in Campbell.

      • Ya know, the roll isn’t mine. I can make comments but the fact is, it doesn’t really mean squat. Any comment I could make would be my opinion. It wouldn’t have anything to do with what I might comment on. It is sort of the nature of the beast.

    • Absolutely right. I would give the nod to Different Seasons because it contains The Body, which might possibly be the best thing he ever wrote.

      Many years ago, I spent the evening in a hotel bar singing teenage death songs with Stephen King and a half dozen other people. One of the more pleasant authors I ever met (there were a number of real assholes).

    • It’s a good roll ya got there, hooda.

      Stephen King: Different Seasons, yes, as gummitch says, because of The Body. Great story, and the movie version didn’t fuck with it much. I did like most of The Stand, as well as most of It. Firestarter was good, too.

      • Stand by Me, The Shining (have to say the book kept me riveted but the movie sucked)

  31. King has never worked with any other writer that I am aware of. His endeavors into fantasy really did suck. And his work since his accident I’m afraid I can’t comment on because I haven’t read any of it.

    • He did at least one book with Peter Straub.

      The only book of his I still own is Danse Macabre, his really brilliant study of horror fiction.

  33. I hate to say it but right now I feel like Lucas Davenport. The difficult thing is deciding just which book I’m in right now. BTW, Davenport is a first class asshole.

  34. Barak Obama replacing the Colonel. I never did like KFC. Good beans and coleslaw tho.

  35. Does it matter one teensy little bit that the Zoo has absolutely not one iota of anything concerning anything that TP posts?

      • That’s good, because I didn’t want to get trampled in a virtual stampede to be the first to answer.

    • Yes. It matters. It matters a great deal. Certainly more than an iota, maybe as much as a smidge.

      We write about what we want to write about. If something on TP interests me enough to want to comment, I’ll mention it here, and comment on it. If TP really valued my input, they’d have hired me. I did apply, but they said I was “overqualified.” So, I guess they don’t want my voice, my skills. Their loss.

      And that’s my “rhetorical” answer.

      • after 3 1/2 years of unemployment, the phrase “you’re overqualified” has led me to two conclusions; 1) I can be pushed to violent reactions; 2) management has not evolved, and/or their bosses deliberately want to dumb down for profit reasons only, and their business model is short term thinking at best.

    • OMG! What will the right wingers, the bible thumpers, Israel, AIPAC and FOX have to say about this???? The Koch brothers, just like their Papa are profiting by doing business with an alleged enemy who supposedly sponsors terrorist organizations. OMFG!

    • easy for you to say white liner on her way or at the glorious seaside listening to mother lapping and tapping at the sand she has plummeted for how long waiting for us to remember her to pay our respect as we dance our tune she doesn’t understand forgetfulness and Kerouac.

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