How the Chemist Drinks Coffee (Wordless Wednesday) and Words for Wednesday

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Linking up with Wordless Wednesday, BeThere2Day, and Sandee at Comedy Plus.     

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Words for Wednesday was begun by Delores and has become a moveable feast of word or picture or music prompts to encourage us to write stories, poems, or whatever strikes our fancy.    

This month, the prompts are being provided by Hilary Melton-Butcher and they will be posted by Elephant's Child.           

This week's prompts are:

•  Mimsy (rather feeble)
• Bitter
• Dress
• Thyme
• Boom
  
  

And/or

• Dish
• Genre
• Embroidery
• Bread 
• Spread
  

Charlotte (Mother Owl) has given us Turquoise Blue as the colour of the month.  If you can also incorporate it into your stories she (and I) will be grateful.

Some might think the old stories of GI's mailing home parts of Jeeps in boxes and crates from overseas duty stations and thus having themselves a whole Jeep to go home to later is a myth, a MIMSY EMBROIDERY of the GENRE of war stories, SPREAD like all such myths but having no basis in fact.

It is a fact, it did happen, at least once, and probably more often than that.

Sweetie's father and mother married two years before Pearl Harbor.  His father joined the military soon after and was gone for four years.

Although he was a college graduate, he did not want to be an officer, instead becoming a Master Sergeant and he was put in charge as Quartermaster of Supplies for all of the North Africa Campaign.

He wasn't stationed anywhere close to a seaside resort, instead of the Turquoise Blue Mediterranean Sea, he was stuck where he only saw sand dunes and more sand dunes with a dingy and dilapidated city nearby, but he was in charge of all supplies.  If you needed anything, from a chafing DISH to DRESS boots, BREAD to THYME, it all came through his hands.  He was in charge of making sure it was ordered and got where it was supposed to go.

He didn't let being in the middle of nowhere make him BITTER, even if, as he used to tell his son, their only entertainment was to go drinking at the local watering hole and when the local dancing girls started to look good, they'd know they'd had enough and would haul each other back to base.

Of course, being in charge of all the supplies he could order anything for himself, and he did.  He ordered Jeep parts, one of each.  Yes, he shipped them home in crates and boxes, to a mechanic friend who was deferred from service because they needed mechanics back home.

When he did get home, early in '45, the two of them put the Jeep together and BOOM, instant "stylish" wheels (at least a lot of people thought so back then).  He drove it for many years.

It was still running when the family left Biloxi in 1958 and he donated it to The Biloxi Historical Society (or some such group).  Within a few years, they started the Biloxi Tour Train to take tourists around town, one of those little tram style things you'll sometimes still see in seaside places, and they used the Jeep, with an elaborately built cover that looked like a locomotive engine, to pull the thing.  

When the family went back to Biloxi in 1971, it was still there and still running.  (It's a different train now, it no longer even looks like a locomotive, but they still do the tour and if you ever get to Biloxi, Mississippi on the Gulf Coast, it's worth taking.)

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Today is:

Family History Day -- sponsored by Wellcat Holidays, urging people to brush up on family history during summer family reunions

Feast Day of Elisha the Prophet -- Christian

Flag Day -- United States

Freedom Day -- Malawi

Kuopio Dance Festival -- Kuopio, Finland (exotic dance art by familiar and new artists from around the world on the sunlit summer nights; through next Tuesday)

Leinapaev -- Estonia (Mourning and Commemoration Day; remembering those deported under Soviet rule)

Liberation Day -- Falkland Islands

Missing Mutts Awareness Day -- to help families whose beloved pets have gone missing, the Missing Mutts Awareness Society was formed; it no longer seems to sponsor a particular day, though its Facebook Page is active    

Mourning and Hope Day -- Lithuania (remembering those exiled to Siberia under the Soviets)

National Bourbon Day -- celebrating America's "Native Spirit"   

National Strawberry Shortcake Day

National Time Out Day -- US, sponsored by The Association of Operating Room Nurses, which wants everyone involved in surgeries to take time out before the procedure to verify the surgery site, type, and patient and decrease OR errors  

Pause for the Pledge Day -- US, in conjunction with Flag Day, all citizens are asked to pause at 7pm EDT to recite the Pledge

Pig Callers' Day -- no clue where this came from, or why; any pig callers out there want to weigh in?

Pop Goes the Weasel Day -- and just as no one knows for sure the origins of the song or it's meaning, no one knows why it is celebrated on this day

Rice Planting Festivals -- Sumiyoshi Shrine, Osaka and Izawanomiya Shrine, Mie Prefecture, Japan (rice planting at sacred fields, some rites date back over 1,700 years)

Runic Half-month Dag (day) commences

Sandpaper Day -- Isaac Fisher, Jr., of Vermont, was issued the first US patent for sandpaper on this day in 1834

St. Basil the Great's Day (traditional date in Roman Catholic Church, current date in Episcopal Church; Patron of education, exorcisms, hospital administrators, monks, liturgists, reformers; Cappadocia; Russia)

St. Castora Gabrielli's Day (Patron of difficult marriages, widows)

World Blood Donor Day -- International 

     Blood Type Awareness Day -- while donating, make sure you know your type, and that of your loved ones; in an emergency, it's good to know

Anniversaries Today:

The United States Army is founded, 1775

Munich, Germany is founded, 1158

Birthdays Today:

Daryl Sabara, 1992

Lucy Hale, 1989

Kevin McHale, 1988

Diablo Cody, 1978

Steffi Graf, 1969

Yasmine Bleeth, 1968

Traylor Howard, 1966

Boy George, 1961

Eric Arthur Heiden, 1958

Will Patton, 1954

Eddie Mekka, 1952

Donald Trump, 1946

John F. MacArthur, 1939

Jerzy Kosinski, 1933

Joe Arpaio, 1932

Marla Gibbs, 1931

Che Guevara, 1928

Pierre Salinger, 1925

Gene Barry, 1919

Burl Ives, 1909

Alois Alzheimer, 1864

John Bartlett, 1820

Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1811

Debuting/Premiering Today:

The Cable Guy(Film), 1996

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves(Film), 1991

"The Gong Show"(TV), 1976

Today in History:

Kublai Khan defeated the force of Nayan and other traditionalist Borjigin  princes in East Mongolia and Manchuria, 1287

Richard II in England meets leaders of Peasants' Revolt on Blackheath and the Tower of London is stormed by rebels who enter without resistance, 1381

Margaret Jones is hanged in Boston for witchcraft in the first such execution for the Massachusetts colony, 1648

The Stars and Stripes is adopted by Congress as the Flag of the United States, 1777

Bounty mutiny survivors including Captain William Bligh and 18 others reach Timor after a nearly 7,400 km (4,000-mile) journey in an open boat, 1789

Whiskey distilled from maize is first produced by American clergyman the Rev Elijah Craig, who named it Bourbon because he lived in Bourbon County, Kentucky, 1789

Badi VII, king of Sennar, surrenders his throne and realm to Ismail Pasha, general of the Ottoman Empire, ending the existence of that Sudanese kingdom, 1821

The village of Henley, on the River Thames in Oxfordshire, stages its first Royal Regatta, 1839

Trade unions are legalised in Canada, 1872

Norway adopts female suffrage, 1907

John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown depart St. John's, Newfoundland on the first nonstop transatlantic  flight, 1919

Action Comics issue one is released, introducing Superman, 1938

The Canadian Library Association is established, 1946

UNIVAC I, the world's first commercial computer, is dedicated by the U.S. Census Bureau, 1951

The European Space Research Organisation is established in Paris – later becoming the European Space Agency, 1962

The Vatican announces the abolition of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, 1966

The 1994 Stanley Cup Riots occur after the New York Rangers win the Stanley Cup from Vancouver, 1994

The Wallow Fire becomes the largest wildfire in the history of the US State of Arizona, 2011

Australia announces its plan to create the largest marine reserve in the world, 2012

The women of Switzerland hold a strike to protest the slow change of pace toward equality in their country, 2019

Denmark and Canada agree to split the arctic Hans Island, ending their 50-year "Whiskey War", where each country laid claim by buying whiskey on the island, 2022