Last Munchkin Standing

As of last Thursday, that title goes to Jerry Maren, who will be 94 years old this Friday! (One of the uncredited Munchkin villagers died in Las Vegas at 95 years old, the last woman and then-oldest surviving cast member, a woman named Ruth Duccini.) Anyway, Maren was the Lollipop Guild member in green who greeted Dorothy in Munchkinland from The Wizard of Oz. And THAT musical we know and love – the one which our son Jeffrey when he first saw it some years ago commented that “the world turned color” – turns 75 in August! And the book upon which it's based, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, turns 114 this year …

I really could go on all day about Oz if you let me, particularly since I'm interested in seeing how Once Upon A Time will handle it – I assume they will, if the Wicked Witch of the West is a villain when the show comes back in March – the fantasy land of my childhood. (Really, it beat out Narnia by thirty cents and a semi-autobiographical account of this I've given in my novel Refugees From The Emerald City.) But for those who aren't fans or who don't miss days when you read “classics” and weren't condemned to look for deeper meaning and hidden symbolism where there wasn't any – can you say the green light on the dock in The Great Gatsby? – forgive me this digression, pray.

“Just behave yourselves.” That's what Betty's advice to me at church Sunday, the day after she and her husband Bill had celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary the day before! It doesn't sound much fun, but as to reach their golden anniversary milestone (which Martha's parents will in five years) we would remain married and alive until the year 2053, which according to Star Trek is the year we make first contact … boy, now I'm really digressing. At first service I got to read the Old and New Testament lessons which I'd already signed up to do. And I was signed up in the bulletin under lector as just “David”. No last name, which means there I've the name recognition of Napoleon.

 

 

In Sunday school I had thirteen kids from second and third grade, more than enough to perform the puppet play I'd written for Jesus Calming The Storm (based on the Bible story from Matthew 8) after we read it out of the illustrated SPARK Bible we have for the lower grades. And I need to write the play for Daniel And The Lions' Den (based on Daniel 6) because we perform that in a week and a half! And for that I was in Barnes & Noble last week and bought a lion hand puppet – it being a lions' den and our only big cat in the puppets we did have was a leopard! – and got reimbursed by Sunday school for it.

And now for me it's lunch time, David