Smiley: Curious Conner confronts colorful cleric

I’m always looking for funny stories about things kids say. Warren Byrd, of Baton Rouge, tells this one:

“My son Matthew, his wife Allison, and their three wonderful boys joined my wife, Arlene, and me for Father’s Day at St. Aloysius Catholic Church.

“All went great, and during the close of Mass, Father Nutan asked all the fathers to stand for a special prayer. He was dressed in a beautifully embroidered solid green robe.

“Conner, my 3-year-old grandson, was near me, so I picked him up to hold him during the prayer.

“Conner was talking a tad loud, so I pointed to the priest and whispered to him to be quiet, because the Father was saying a prayer.

“Conner looked up, and pointed at the priest, and said: ‘The Green Father?’

“It was all I could to not drop him on his head, but I responded, ‘Yes. The Green Father.’

“Hope Father Nutan will forgive me.”

Magic elixir

“For many years my uncle, the late Benny Christiana, owned a full-service Gulf Oil service station on Lee Circle in New Orleans,” says Ina G. Navarre, of Baton Rouge.

“He insisted that each customer be treated courteously, promptly and properly. This included checking the oil (providing an honest assessment), dispensing the requested amount of gasoline, etc.

“He was very particular about cleaning the windshields, front and back. Each employee had spray bottles filled with ‘magic’ cleaning fluid.

“Many customers asked if they could purchase the cleaning material, but he never sold it, insisting that it was his special formula, and if everyone knew it they might not need to come back to his station.

“Only years after he sold the station and moved onto a different line of business did he confess that the magic cleaner was simply tap water applied with a LOT of elbow grease.”

Ice show

We just had a story about watching the lengthy (and icy) movie “Dr. Zhivago” at a drive-in theater.

Vicki Frame, of Kenner, doesn’t mention the name of the movie in her story, but it should have been “Dr. Zhivago.”

“Many years ago, my boyfriend (eventually my husband) and I went to the drive-in movie on a very cold night.

“It kept getting colder and colder. Eventually our breath started freezing on the windshield, making it difficult to see the movie.

“Luckily (?), at the time he was a smoker, and used his lighter to keep melting the ice enough for us to finish the movie. Too bad it was such a good movie!”

The “Gaux” Team

Here is one of many notes I received after May Waggoner’s Friday suggestion that “geaux,” for “go,” which is actually pronounced “Joe” in French, be replaced with the correct “gaux.”

John Francois, of Lafayette, says, “Like Dr. Waggoner, I, too, have tried in the past to correct the pronunciation by a certain mind-set of the non-word ‘geaux.’

“But it’s hard to correct or to change the current fad of adding other letters to words ending with an ‘o.’

“Apparently, the longer one can make such a word and still have the same sound, the more cute it is.

“Therefore, I propose spelling any word ending in ‘o’ (such as ‘go’), ‘gauxtbcdfghjklmnpqrstvwz,’ because no matter how many consonants you add to ‘gaux,’ the word would still be pronounced ‘go,’ since almost all final consonants in French are not pronounced.”

Special People Dept.

Dorothy and Victor Blanchard III, of Plaquemine, were married 60 years Thursday, June 22. They celebrated at a surprise party Saturday.
Bruce and Linda Sitar, of Denham Springs, celebrated their 50th anniversary Friday, June 23.