Does America need a ‘Tidyman’ character?

March is a good month to focus on putting an end, once and for all, to pollution, wouldn’t you say, ol’ chap?

Indeed, replied Bear Gryllis, a contemporary British icon, who is leading the charge across the pond to “stop the devastation being caused by littering. Too many beauty spots are now scarred by rubbish,” he attests.

Gryllis, an adventurer and television producer, recently wrote an essay for The Daily Mail, a tabloid published in London, to endorse and enlist support for the Great British Spring Clean, scheduled for March 22-April 23.

The event is sanctioned by the ongoing “Keep Britain Tidy” anti-litter movement. The familiar green ambassador, “Tidyman,” has undergone a makeover. He is now both animated, life-size and “out and about” mingling with the populace.

British television journalist Kirstie Allsopp said Tidyman “symbolizes the action we should all be doing – putting our rubbish in a bin”…to make Britain “a cleaner, more attractive place. I am delighted to have had the opportunity to give him a hug!”

(Inquiring minds want to know…is Gryllis available for hugging as well? The official response: “Mum’s the word.”) Dagnabbit all.

Gryllis’ celebrity status is enhanced by his designation as “Chief Scout of the United Kingdom and Overseas Territories,” the top honor awarded by the British Boy Scouts Association.

Growing up in the 1980s on the Isle of Wight in the English Channel south of the big island, Edward Michael Gryllis said his father would take him on adventures to climb the cliffs around the coast.

“I have strong memories of it being such a beautiful place – but I also remember the litter that people would leave behind. As a child, it made me sad that people would want to ruin the island like this.”

“I’ve always felt strongly against littering. We were brought up to be respectful, whether it’s to your friends, family or the environment. Those things mattered much more to my parents than good school reports. Luckily!”

Gryllis shared: “Now that I’ve got a family of my own (three sons aged 10, 12 and 15), I’m even more conscious of the need to be vigilant about recycling, picking up litter and trying to set a good example. Kids always learn more by looking at how we live than by what we say.”

“Making solid laws about single-use plastic is going to be key to all our futures. It just needs politicians to be bold, stand up and do the right thing.”

For his television projects, Gryllis said his team “does its best to ensure litter-clearing is non-negotiable on all our film shoots – wherever we are in the world. We’ve got a new survival-adventure race show, Eco-Challenge (out on Amazon next year), and the competitors will be under strict rules to carry all their rubbish with them.”

“We’ve made this aspect a crucial part of the race, so each team has to think laterally to respect Mother Nature and leave the terrain exactly as they found it. I like the phrase: ‘Leave only footprints and take only memories.’”

Gryllis also wrote: “We all need to think of ourselves as stewards and custodians of this Earth, to look after it and nurture it for the future. I am painfully aware that we have finite natural resources and ever-growing environmental threats – most of which, like plastic, have been caused by us. I have seen first-hand the devastation that’s caused by plastic littering.”

“Great swathes of it wash up every day on the remote island beaches near Panama where we film the Channel 4 survival series, and I’ve stumbled across items of discarded plastic in some of the most remote and unlikely places, from the icy shores of Greenland to the Namibian Skeleton Coast (along the Atlantic Ocean in southern Africa). Even these areas of wild beauty are becoming scarred.”

“It is heartbreaking to witness close-up the harm that is being caused to sea birds and mammals,” he wrote. He complimented the British Scouting organization for helping build awareness and to put kids’ boots on the ground to form British litter brigades.

Allison Ogden-Newton, the brains behind the “Tidyman” character and the organization’s president, said: “Litter blights our streets, parks and beaches and costs us millions of pounds to clear up every year. Keep Britain Tidy has been here since 1954 to inspire people to eliminate litter now and for future generations.”

“But this is about more than simply getting people to pick up litter,” she stated. “We aim to change behaviour permanently by spotlighting the problem daily and offering creative solutions.”

Most historians agree that America’s “Litterbug” originated in a 1931 novel by author and highway beautification advocate Alice Rush McKeon of Maryland.

Perhaps in 2019, the little old litterbug image needs an overhaul, similar to Tidyman. Who is best positioned to lead our “national bug” to the “fountain of youth” before the plastic avalanche swallows it up?

Never underestimate the power of Scouting in the U.S.A.

N.C. monument honors homegrown U.S. presidents

On the grounds of the State Capitol in Raleigh, N.C., is a historic monument titled “Presidents North Carolina Gave the Nation.” The statue is an appropriate prelude to the upcoming observance of Presidents’ Day, celebrated this year on Monday, Feb. 18.

The sculpture memorializes three U.S. presidents who the Tar Heel state claims as native sons – Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk and Andrew Johnson. They all occupied the White House during the 19th century.

Andrew Jackson of Union County served as the seventh U.S. president from 1829-37, and his inscription reads: “He revitalized American democracy.” Jackson is credited with making “democracy the touchstone of American politics.” He was viewed as the first “people’s president,” ushering in what historians have dubbed the era of “the common man” in American politics.

James Polk of Mecklenburg County served as the 11th president from 1845-49 and was praised because: “He enlarged our national boundaries.” Indeed, during Polk’s term in office, the United States annexed Texas, acquired California and determined the 49th parallel as the international boundary with Canada, thereby setting the stage for Congress to establish the Oregon Territory.

Andrew Johnson of Wake County served as the 17th president from 1865-69. His inscription attests: “He defended the Constitution.” Johnson was serving as vice president to President Abraham Lincoln when Congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to “abolish slavery and involuntary servitude.”

When Lincoln was assassinated in April 1865, Johnson was sworn in as commander in chief. A great accomplishment was Johnson’s perseverance in securing the amendment’s ratification by the states. He personally appealed to governors of six hold-out states (including North Carolina and South Carolina). Johnson prevailed, and the amendment was ratified Dec. 6, 1865.

The Raleigh monument was sponsored by the North Carolina General Assembly, and it is one of the last works completed by acclaimed sculptor Charles Keck of New York City. The figures are cast bronze – Polk and Johnson are shown in seated positions, flanking Jackson, who is shown riding his horse. All are atop a pedestal of Mount Airy granite.

The sculpture was dedicated in ceremonies on Oct. 19, 1948. President Harry Truman came to Raleigh to do the honors. The mystery remains to this day – which of Jackson’s many horses is in the statue? He was both an ardent breeder and an avid bettor. Terra Schramm, state capitol site administrator, said it appears to be a horse with no name.

The dedication event drew a gigantic crowd – upwards of 50,000 people. In its news coverage, The State, forerunner to Our State magazine, simply said: “Name unknown,” referring to the horse.

Just for fun, let’s assume he is a white stallion known as Sam Patch. Jackson named that horse after America’s first daredevil Sam Patch, a professional waterfall jumper. Or perhaps the horse is a she – Jackson’s gray mare named Bolivia, who was a sleek racehorse. A third possibility is Duke, Jackson’s warhorse from the Battle of New Orleans. Remember the year?

It was 1814 when American troops “took a little trip…along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississipp’…and caught the bloody British in the town of New Orleans. We fired our guns and the British kept a-comin’ – there wasn’t nigh as many as there was a while ago.”

Andrew Jackson’s heritage is by far the most controversial of the three men on the statue, because South Carolina thinks he was born there.

Not to rain on that parade…but astute North Carolina historians have pinpointed that the family cabin of Andrew and Elizabeth (Betty) Hutchison Jackson, recent emigrants from Ireland, was built in 1765 on a 200-acre plot near the head of Ligget’s Branch, a tributary of Twelve Mile Creek.

It is now known as the community of Waxhaw in Union County, N.C. (The region was called the Waxhaws before the formal boundary between the Carolinas was established, named for a Native American tribe.)

Betty was “with child,” carrying the couple’s third child when her husband died in late February 1767, the result of a freak logging accident. He was 29. The burial was to be in the cemetery of the Old Waxhaw Presbyterian Church, about 12 miles south of the Jackson homestead (definitely on the South Carolina side).

Jimmy Phillips, a distant cousin of the Jackson family and a genealogist, published an essay in 2009, commenting: “Heavy snow had fallen in the Waxhaws when Betty and her sons were bundled into a wagon for the funeral procession. They stopped at the home of George McKemey (aka McCamie)…for refreshments.” (George was married to one of Betty’s sisters, Margaret.)

From there, the combined families traveled on to the Crawford Plantation, home of James and Jane Crawford (yet a third Hutchison sister). Phillips reported: “There was plenty of food, brandy and fellowship…and before they knew it, night was upon them.” Because of the custom to “sit up” with the corpse, the drinking in the parlor likely continued until daybreak.

Historian Susan Goodman Sides wrote a commentary that was published March 19, 2017, in the Salisbury (N.C.) Post. As she tells it:

“The next morning the dead body was wrapped and tied to a type of sled pulled by horses, and the journey to the burial site at the church began. Rev. William Richardson was prepared to perform the burial service. To their dismay, somehow the corpse had come loose and was gone.” Dabnabbit!

“The pallbearers retraced their path and found the corpse on the bank of one of the creeks they crossed. The body was retrieved, and the burial of Andrew Jackson Sr. took place at the churchyard,” Sides reported.

Will the ocean contain more plastic than fish?

As a world class British yachtswoman, Dame Ellen MacArthur has “seen more of the world’s oceans than almost anyone else,” and she’s alarmed by all the plastic gunk that is floating at sea.

She warns that there will be more waste plastic in the ocean than fish by 2050, unless drastic changes begin to occur soon.

When interviewed by Sandra Laville of The Guardian, a British daily newspaper based in London, MacArthur called the current level of pollution “shocking and horrendous; it’s getting worse not better….”

“This is a systemic failure, and we are trying to go back to the beginning of the pipe and stop that systemic failure through redesigning the system,” she said.

“It is by working with these companies, with policy makers, with cities, with innovation to design bio-benign products – that we will tackle this. There isn’t a company out there that wants to see its logo in the ocean or in a river.”

MacArthur, 42, grew up in Whatstandwell near Matlock in Derbyshire, England. She began sailing with her aunt at age 4 and spent her spare time reading sailing books.

In 1994, MacArthur launched her career in yachting by working on a 60-foot vessel and teaching sailing classes. She achieved her yachtmaster qualification at age 18, and in 1995 she won the Young Sailor of the Year Award after sailing solo around the British Isles.

In 2005, MacArthur set a world record for the fastest solo nonstop voyage around the world, completing the 27,348-mile journey in 71 days, 14 hours, 18 minutes and 33 seconds (thereby trimming 1 day, 8 hours, 35 minutes and 49 seconds off the previous record). As a reward, MacArthur was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2005.

“I remember quite poignantly writing in the log on the boat: What I have got on the boat is everything. It really struck me that you save everything, everything you have, because you know it’s finite, you know there isn’t any more. What you have on that boat is it, your entire world.”

Laville commented that “back on dry land, away from the intensity of racing, MacArthur began to process the thoughts she had on the water.”

“If we are using these resources in a very linear fashion we are going to use them up at some stage, and no one knows exactly when,” MacArthur stated.

Laville reported that MacArthur had researched how best to move away from the disposable economic model to one in which resources are kept in use for as long as possible, then recovered and regenerated into other products and materials.

“She decided to dedicate herself to acting as a catalyst for change – a task that required her single-minded attention,” Laville said.

“I was at a position in my life where doors had opened that I wasn’t expecting to open,” MacArthur said. 

Hence, MacArthur retired from competitive racing in 2010 and announced the formation of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a charity that works with business and education to accelerate the transition to a circular economy.

Today, the organization is based on the Isle of Wight, just off the southern shore of the English mainland. The foundation employs more than 100 people, and the location is ideal to allow MacArthur and family to sail, but now just purely as a hobby.

MacArthur told Laville that she believes it is through global partnerships and “incredibly frank conversations” with industry that change will naturally come by proving that more money can be made from circular rather than linear economics.

“We are trying to change a system, not one business,” MacArthur said. “We need to change the way people think, the way things are designed, the materials that are put into them.”

Her optimism is such that she believes change will happen through collaboration, and she has numerous leading companies as partners, including Nike, Unilever, Google, Renault and Royal Philips of the Netherlands.

Work of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation has been endorsed by the World Economic Forum, the international organization for public-private cooperation, that is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.

MacArthur says a business-as-usual approach is unacceptable, because based at the current rate of projected growth, “new plastics will consume 20% of all oil production within 35 years, up from an estimated 5% today.”

“Plastics production has increased twentyfold since 1964, reaching 311 metric tonnes in 2014, she says. It is expected to double again in the next 20 years and almost quadruple by 2050.”

More plastics than fish in the ocean? Dagnabbit it all.

Thinking-about-it time is over…we need some action. Bring on Alicia Bridges to sing about it, ala her monster disco hit in 1978, “I Love the Nightlife.”

One fan says it’s pronounced “acts-shawn.”

‘Mrs. Fearnow’s’ migrates to North Carolina

Which product is the winner of the blue ribbon for “best Brunswick stew in a can?”

No contest. The championship can is wrapped with the bright yellow label that shouts out: “Mrs. Fearnow’s Delicious Brunswick Stew with Chicken.”

In 2007, Mrs. Fearnow’s came to roost in North Carolina, when production was moved from Virginia to Sanford in Lee County, located about smack-dab in the middle of the Tar Heel state.

The original recipe belonged to Lillie Pearl Hovermale Fearnow, who was born in 1881 in Berkeley Springs, W.Va., the county seat of Morgan County in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia.

Around 1910, Lillie Pearl and her husband, Brady Goshen Fearnow, moved to Virginia and purchased a farm near the community of Ellerson in Hanover County, north of Richmond. Their land became known as Hope Farm. The family grew fruits and vegetables and raised chickens.

Some of those chickens and vegetables found their way into Lillie Pearl’s “pot of Brunswick stew that seemed to be continually brewing.”

Writing for The Washington Post in 1991, reporter Deborah Marquardt said: “Lillie Pearl started selling jars of the stew and pickles in the 1920s at the Woman’s Exchange” in downtown Richmond, a marketplace where many women sold homemade goods to earn money.

“Now, this lady could cook,” Marquardt stated. “She once earned 40 ribbons on 50 entries at the state fair. Her stew became so popular that a Richmond department store, Thalhimers, asked for several jars.” Then several more, several times over. A family business was created in the family kitchen.

In 1946, Lillie Pearl’s sons, Herbert Clyde Fearnow and George Nelson Fearnow, established the Fearnow Brothers Cannery in nearby Mechanicsville, Va., and began commercial production on a large scale – daily filling about 1,000 cans – effectively launching the brand name of Mrs. Fearnow’s Brunswick Stew.

Lillie Pearl’s daughters-in-law, Norma Ruth Morrison Fearnow (wife of Herbert) and Finnella Saunders Fearnow (wife of George), helped prepare the stew. Finnella said Lillie Pearl’s original stew recipe called for “onion, parsley, celery, tomatoes, chicken, potatoes, butter beans, salt, pepper, red pepper, sugar and okra. And you didn’t dare call it soup to her,” Finnella recalled. “If you did, she’d whack you on your shins with her cane.”

Lillie Pearl worked at the plant every day through September 1969; she died six months later at age 88, having suffered a stroke. (Dagnabbit all, she was a legend if the food industry.)

Among the many accolades received by the family was the designation by the London-based Connoisseur magazine in 1988. Editors declared Mrs. Fearnow’s Delicious Brunswick Stew to be “one of the 10 worthiest canned treats in America.”

In the 1990s, the Brunswick (Va.) Chamber of Commerce, headquartered in Lawrenceville, quite literally added cans of Mrs. Fearnow’s stew to its “economic development tool kit,” giving away the stew as an incentive to entice businesses to the county. For certain, the chamber is still all in – its logo features an image of a big, black cauldron of bubbly Brunswick stew. You can almost smell it.

The Fearnow canning facility underwent nine expansions by the time the family celebrated the 50-year anniversary of the business in 1996, growing from 800 square feet to more than 19,000 square feet. Production reached 18,000 cans a day. The stew dominated the top spots in the canned meat sections of North Carolina and Virginia grocery stores.

In 1999, the Richmond Times-Dispatch broke the story about the sale of the Fearnow family business to Castleberry-Snow’s Brands Inc. of Augusta, Ga. The new owner announced it would move production of Mrs. Fearnow’s to the company’s existing canning facility in Bedford, Va.

Bumble Bee Foods acquired Castleberry-Snow’s Brands in December 2005; and Bost Distributing Company (of Sanford, N.C.) bought the Mrs. Fearnow’s Brunswick Stew brand from Bumble Bee in 2007.

In 2015, Bost became Boone Brands. On the company website, Mrs. Fearnow’s is positioned and photographed as the flagship brand.

The Boone Brands’ marketing literature claims: “Mrs. Fearnow’s is sure to please…it meets the need for home meal solutions…is an excellent storm preparedness item and great value for ‘not from scratch’ cooking.”

Mrs. Fearnow’s has “true Southern style delicious taste, and is great for camping, tailgating and a quick meal before the Friday night high school football game.”

Better get you some…and stock up the pantry.

Winter is Brunswick Stew season: Get you some!

Brunswick stew is pure Southern comfort food…especially meant to be enjoyed on cold winter nights. A steamy-hot bowl is guaranteed to warm up your innards. The experience is like hugging yourself from the inside out.

One rarely stops with just one bowl of Brunswick stew, however…because it tastes SO Dagnabbit good!

The debate rages on – did Brunswick stew originate in Brunswick County, Va., or in Brunswick, Ga.?

The New York Times sent a crackerjack reporter – Ann Pringle Harris – to unravel the mystery in 1993.

She heard “lyrical accounts of open fires, black iron pots…and a mess of squirrel, rabbit and possum that somebody’s daddy brought home. Never mind that hardly anyone now alive has ever taken part in such a ritual – it’s all part of the legend.”

Harris reported: “Virginians think Georgia’s stew is too spicy. Georgians find Virginia’s stew too mushy and thick.”

Georgian Fran Kelly says: “Virginians cook their meat down to shreds and thicken the stew with potatoes. I’d call it more of a ‘chicken muddle.’”

Virginian John Drew Clary explains that in Virginia, “Brunswick stew is a full meal – we like it thick instead of soupy – whereas in Georgia, it is simply a side dish.”

Virginia places the invention of Brunswick stew in a hunting camp on the banks of the Nottoway River in upper Brunswick County in 1828. (Brunswick County abuts the North Carolina counties of Warren and Northampton. The three counties share access to Lake Gaston.)

The Commonwealth of Virginia erected a historic marker in 1997, located on U.S. Route 58 in Brunswick County, between Lawrenceville and Emporia. The text reads:

“According to local tradition, while Dr. Creed Haskins and several friends were on a hunting trip in Brunswick County in 1828, his camp cook, Jimmy Matthews, hunted squirrels for a stew. Matthews simmered the squirrels with butter, onions, stale bread and seasoning, thus creating the dish known as Brunswick stew. Recipes for Brunswick stew have changed over time as chicken has replaced squirrel, and vegetables have been added, but the stew remains thick and rich. Other states have made similar claims but Virginia’s is the first.”

On Feb. 22, 1988, the Virginia General Assembly authorized a Brunswick stew proclamation to reinforce the notion that Brunswick County is “the place of origin of this astonishing gastronomical miracle.”

Georgians, however, insist “their claim is as solid as the pot on which it rests,” Harris reported. In that cast iron pot, they say the first Brunswick stew was made in Glynn County in 1898. The 25-gallon pot is believed to have come from a former slave ship.”

Georgia has its own state marker located on Interstate 95 at milepost 40, thanks to an Eagle Scout project completed in 1988 by Christopher K. Jones of Troop 224, which is sponsored by Lakeside United Methodist Church in Brunswick. The wording is: “The first Brunswick Stew was made here in the Brunswick-Golden Isles area in early colonial days. It remains an American Favorite.”

“While Georgia and Virginia fight about Brunswick stew, North Carolina eats it,” Harris wrote.

“Indeed, the dish seems to be offered more frequently in restaurants below the North Carolina-Virginia border than above it,” she said.

Matthew Poindexter, a reporter with the Durham-based Indy Week, a weekly tabloid newspaper, offers an imaginary “certificate of origination” to Virginia, citing a published recipe, which appeared in an 1862 edition of the Southern Recorder newspaper, based in Milledgeville, Ga. The recipe was labeled “Virginia Stew.”

It takes a team to do the prep work and cook Brunswick stew, because the stirring of the pot, no matter what size, is constant to keep the stew from burning on the bottom and to prevent it from “clumping up.”

In Georgia, these stew crews call themselves “Stew Dogs.” Virginia has its “Stewmasters,” and the Brunswick Stewmasters Association welcomes newcomers to go through a one-year apprenticeship to learn proper cooking techniques and how to mix the ingredients.

John Drew Clary, who served as association president in 2010, notes “the stew should take a village to make, and feed just as many.”

When you’re cooking in an 85-gallon cast-iron stew pot with a wooden paddle, the “stew is done when the paddle can stand up in the middle,” Clary says.

Oh, ‘to see a hippo hero standing there’

Christmas 2018 is a milestone event for Gayla Peevey Henderson. This year is the 65-year anniversary of her hit song that was released in 1953, “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas.”

Gayla recorded John Rox’s novelty song as a 10-year-old girl. Her producer at Columbia Records was the legendary Mitch Miller, who conducted the orchestra and played oboe. “In those days, you sang live with the orchestra in the recording studio,” she said. “I didn’t have to sing it that many times. I would say the third time was the take.”

She recently told a news reporter that now in her 70s, she expected her life was going to be “all about playing with grandchildren.”

Gayla Peevey Henderson may have wanted to retire…but her song hasn’t. The Hippo song has gone retro, thanks in part to Hallmark’s introduction in 2008 of a hippo-shaped ornament that plays the Hippo tune.

An article in The New York Times written by Joanne Kaufman in 2016 applauded the creativity of the holiday advertising campaign that year by the U.S. Postal Service for “adopting the Hippo song.”

“The ditty was, perhaps, unfamiliar to many listeners, but it penetrated the mind space of the unwary at warp speed – and stayed there. Resistance was futile,” Kaufman wrote.

An early black-and-white video of Gayla pausing while playing a game of jacks with her friends to perform the Hippo song has become a viral sensation.

On Gayla’s website, she tells readers: “Surprisingly, the Hippo song has gained in popularity and airplay over the last few years and…a lot of merchandise has hit the shelves, too, with my voice streaming out of everything from bouncing balls to Hallmark cards and keepsake Christmas ornaments. It’s fun for me and nice to have a legacy that puts a smile on people’s faces and a little warm Christmas cheer in their hearts.”

Gayla Peevey grew up in Oklahoma, and she started singing “practically out of the womb. I can’t remember when I didn’t sing, I really can’t.” As a pre-schooler, she was singing with the Baptist Church choir. One writer said: “Her robust voice with its country sheen was a force of nature.”

An uncle who played fiddle on a radio show broadcast from Oklahoma City arranged a guest spot for Gayla when she was 8; it led first to a twice-a-week gig on the local NBC affiliate.

Talent scouts were watching and listening in, for Gayla was invited to become a regular on “Saturday Night Revue,” an NBC variety show hosted by Hoagy Carmichael. On cue, the Peeveys moved to Hollywood, Calif.

For her debut, she was paired to sing with Dean Martin. “Plucked out of local television, it was a big jump,” she said, “but they were so nice to me.”

On Oct. 18, 1953, Gayla Peevey sang her new Hippo song on the “Toast of the Town” TV show hosted by Ed Sullivan.

Seize the day. The success of the new song prompted the Oklahoma City Zoo to launch a publicity campaign to buy Gayla Peevey a real hippopotamus in 1953, encouraging children to contribute coins.

Gayla said: “Every day in the newspaper, there was a little circle where you could tape your dime or your quarter and mail it in.” Time was short, if the hippo was to arrive on Christmas Eve. The zoo collected some $4,000 – more than enough to seal the deal.

Upon meeting Mathilda, the full-grown Nile hippopotamus that was shipped into Oklahoma City from Central Park Zoo in New York City, Gayla was instructed to say: “Oh my, there’s no room for her in our garage. I guess maybe I’ll donate her to the zoo.”

Janelle Stecklein, a reporter for the Enid (Okla.) News & Eagle, reported that Mathilda and her male hubby hippo, Norman, produced nine hippo calves during their time together.

Gayla’s life in the limelight was short-circuited when her parents chose to have her exit show business. The Peeveys moved to the San Diego area so their daughter “could live a normal life.”

That mission is still being accomplished. Gayla and her husband, Cliff Henderson, have a daughter and three grandchildren. The couple is also involved with assorted church and community activities in La Mesa, Calif.

Leaving the music business was not that difficult for Gayla. “You do have this sort of feeling that you’re a has-been at 12,” she laughed. “That was the thing I had to deal with – that I had already peaked.”

As a teenager, she learned to play the guitar and started writing her own songs. In 1959, at age 16, she recorded a love song titled “My Little Marine.” One would suspect there are local collectors who have the original 45, especially Marine Corps Veterans. Making the connection was a bit of a challenge. For some reason, record company had changed Gayla’s name to “Jamie Horton.”

To hear the softer side of Gayla Peevey, flip over “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas” and listen to the B-side. It’s a tune by Mel Leven, who had much success as a songwriter with Walt Disney: “Are My Ears on Straight?”

Olive deserves a spot in ‘reindeer history’

A holiday tradition in this writer’s family is “the filling of the reading basket.” That involves stuffing it with Christmas story books – enjoyed and relived each year by both old and young readers throughout the holiday season.

Among the 60 or so books that live within the big basket during December is a personal favorite – “Olive, the Other Reindeer.” The book was published by Scholastic in 1998, so this year is Olive’s 20-year anniversary (of having been basketed).

“Olive, the Other Reindeer” is a delightfully clever holiday picture book, a perfect choice for any gramps to read together with his 6-year-old grandchild. It’s about a 10-minute activity.

The main character is a dog named Olive. She’s a rather diminutive but frisky pooch, and you might even say she looks like the dog on the box of small-sized Milk-Bone dog biscuits.

In real life, Olive was a Jack Russell Terrier. She was the pet of one of the book’s authors, Vivian Walsh. The co-writer and illustrator is J. Otto Seibold. His drawings portray Olive as a loyal dog with a spunky personality.

In the story, Olive is living in an urban environment, and in December on her daily walks, she would hear the music to the popular song, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” The people were singing “all of the other reindeer.” However, Olive’s perky ears interpreted the lyrics as: “Olive, the other reindeer.”

One day, the refrain set off a bright red light in Olive’s brain, and the message was that Santa Claus needed her at the North Pole, ASAP. Traveling by bus after bus, Olive got there just in the St. Nick of time on Christmas Eve.

She reported for duty to be harnessed to the team. “Dagnabbit,” Santa exclaimed, “dogs can’t fly!” But being the softy that he is…and impressed with Olive’s grit…good ole Santa decided to take her along. He instructed lead reindeer Comet to strap Olive in, tying a sturdy ribbon tightly around her middle. And whoosh, off they went.

Santa encountered several technical difficulties on his journey that year, and the team found themselves in several scrapes. Olive proved to be a true “rescue dog,” enabling Santa to escape the various perils and complete his rounds, delivering toys around the world to good little girls and boys.

Certainly, Olive earned credentials to qualify her as a candidate to be written up in history…just like Rudolph.

However, what sealed the deal for Olive was her performance on the ride back home when the “dreaded North Pole fog” set in…‘twas “thick as a pillow.” The reindeer had lost all sense of direction on the morning of Dec. 25.

But then, Santa remembered that dogs are excellent smellers. Mrs. Claus was baking a Christmas cookie breakfast. The big man asked: “Olive, won’t you guide my sleigh this morning?” Yes indeed she would.

The elves all cheered as Olive, following her nose, orchestrated a perfect landing. After breakfast, the reindeer games began out on the lawn...with Olive joining in.

It makes perfect sense that a Jack Russell dog would appear in a Christmas story, as the breed was developed by a man of the cloth, Parson Jack Russell. The good reverend was assigned in 1832 by the Church of England as Vicar of Swimbridge, a small village along the Taw River in Devon County, which is located in southwest England.

Parson Jack faithfully served the congregation of St. James Church there for more than 40 years. He was a very popular preacher in his day, as his sermons were brief by Victorian standards. That was because his hunting horse was usually saddled and waiting in the churchyard, according to an article from the British Broadcasting Corp. archives.

Therefore, Parson Jack was dubbed “The Sporting Parson.” He was determined to develop a hard-working breed of terrier, dogs that would improve the quality of the great sport of foxhunting.

It was a quest that began around 1815, historian say. While a student at the University of Oxford, Jack Russell acquired his first Fox Terrier from a local milkman. The female dog was named Trump. Jack Russell began by breeding Trump with a Hunt Terrier.

By the 1850s, several generations of offspring had resulted in the recognition of a specific breed; it was termed the Jack Russell Terrier (JRT). Pastor Jack’s dogs “specialized” in flushing foxes out of their foxholes, rather than maiming or killing them.

JRTs “enjoy a good run and a good chase,” especially to “terrier-terrorize” foxes and other critters such as deer, coyotes, badgers, otters, polecats, weasels, wolverines and rabbits. JRTs have high energy and stamina, but they do tend to bark a lot, a trait that both “gained the attention of their masters and frightened burrowing animals from their holes.”

Pastor Jack Russell died in 1883, and his body is buried in the churchyard at Swimbridge.

The nearby village pub was renamed the “Jack Russell Inn” in his honor. The pub sign is a reproduction of a painting of the noble Trump.