You Don't Say!

“The Quote Verifier” is a book I just bought; you want to know who really said what, it’s right there.

“Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels.” A quote from Ginger herself, as most claim? She says she first saw it in a comic strip, Bob Thaves’ “Frank and Ernest.” Bob agrees that he made it up.

Books such as this are favorites of mine, if only because they cut through the dirt and grime of the decades, the rumors and false identifications and let us know exactly what was said and exactly who said it.

Example: “Nice guys finish last.” Red Barber, the Dodgers’ radio announcer, asked Leo Durocher why he couldn’t be a nice guy for a change. Leo, manager of the first-place Dodgers, waved toward the seventh-place Giants’ dugout. “The nice guys are all over there, in seventh place.”

As the over-misquoted Yogi Berra so well put it, “I didn’t say everything I said.”

Everybody Has A Story
Kathleen Scherer passed away this week; she used to live up the road in Moosic, near Scranton. Her obituary notes that, “At one time, she was considered to be the prettiest girl in Moosic by all her peers.”