Don't Slip on the Soap

Bursting with mischief and laughter from his best seller, BREAD AND MOLASSES, Andy is back at his larder of crazy capers with this sidesplitting sequel, from the time the boys vainly compacted their freckles with cowpies to the time they wrote a letter to the King of England, to the time they took salmon sandwiches to a school chum's wake, and the corpse met them at the door.

(Excerpt) We Lived at Church

Sunday School, (I shudder at the name even today) was at two p.m. If it had been at 2 a.m., Pa would have expected us to be at our best even at that hour. My first recollection of Sunday School was one Christmas when I was about four. I had a piece to memorize for the concert and everyone in the house was after me about it, so by the time the concert rolled around I could almost say it backwards.

I only wish I had said it backwards, because with the qualms I went through to say that verse, you'd have thought I was a ballerina on top of a music box. The worst thing they did was place me next to the M.C. He gave me the first line, which in my panic had slid right out of my mind. It was quite an undertaking to perform in front of a live audience. The only natural thing to do was grab hold of the M.C.'s baggy pant leg.

I was to recite "The Night Before Christmas". I didn't walk off with a prize but almost walked off with the M.C.'s pants. Had I recited the whole poem, the M.C. would have had to be taken off in a strait jacket to the nearest mental institution, because as soon as he gave me the first line I started pulling on his pant leg, and before my lines were finished, I had almost yanked his pants right off. I was hell-bent on clutching his pants as that was all that was keeping me from collapsing. With a grip on his right pant leg, I was under his legs, at times making a complete circle, but still holding onto his pants. I never looked at the audience at all, just kept staring straight up in the M.C.'s, eyes, as if he was Romeo and I was Juliet. When he heard me mutter "and to all a good night.", he mumbled , "Thank God, he's finished." I got many requests to go to Hollywood after this, but rejected them all as I heard no one there had loose pants like the Sunday School M.C.

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