Here's the best piece online about Betty Lynn. It was posted by The Andy Griffith Museum in Mt. Airy and I believe it was authored by Jim Clark, who's been working on a book about her life. I added the photos…

MOUNT AIRY, N.C., DATE, 2021—Betty Lynn, the actress best known for her portrayal of Thelma Lou, Barney Fife's sweetheart on The Andy Griffith Show, died peacefully on Saturday, October 16, 2021 after a brief illness. She was 95.

Elizabeth Ann Theresa Lynn was born in Kansas City, Mo., on August 29, 1926. The third generation Missouri native was raised by her mother, Elizabeth Lynn, a respected mezzosoprano and organist, and by her maternal grandparents Johanna and George Andrew Lynn, a longtime engineer for the Missouri Pacific Railroad.
At age 5, Betty began studying dance with renowned dancer Helen Burwell at the Kansas City Conservatory. By age 14, Betty was acting and singing in supper clubs, as well as performing and doing commercial spots for local radio shows.

USO talent scouts visited Kansas City and discovered Betty. After she turned 18, Betty began performing for USO Camp Shows in the United States in 1944. Betty then performed as part of the USO's overseas Foxhole Circuit for the first half of 1945. She and guitarist Tommy Decker began their overseas tour with stops in Casablanca and then Iran before eventually making their way to the war's China-Burma-India Theater, where they visited and performed for servicemen throughout much of the war zone, but with their primary mission being to console and entertain wounded servicemen at military hospitals.

After the allies retook Rangoon in May 1945, Betty was one of the first Americans to visit American POWs who had been released to a Calcutta hospital after having endured horrible atrocities during their imprisonment. She is also thought to be the only American woman to have traveled the dangerous Burma Road during the war.

At one point in her tour of duty, Betty, Tommy Decker, a couple of Marines and an interpreter traveled by jeep in a remote area "on the road to Mandalay," not far from the front lines. A U.S. Marines captain had given Betty a loaded Colt revolver and told her, "Take this. You might need to use it." Betty recalled, "I didn't know whether he meant for use on the enemy or in desperation on myself, but I took the gun and always kept it close."

After the war, Betty was recognized for her service "above and beyond the call of duty" with a special commendation from the U.S. War Department. She was later named Honorary Colonel in the American Legion.

In 2009, Betty joined veterans of World War II on the North Carolina Triad's inaugural Honor Flight to visit the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. "I was deeply honored to be asked to participate and to have the chance to express my gratitude to the surviving veterans and those memorialized," Betty said at the time.

Betty returned to New York City after the war and quickly found work. She was touring the Northeast with Park Avenue in preparation for that new show's Broadway run when she caught the attention of Hollywood scouts. She received offers from seven studios, but ultimately decided to do a screen test for Twentieth Century-Fox. Studio head Daryl F. Zanuck immediately took out an option on Betty and eventually signed her to a multi-year contract.

Betty's first film for Fox was 1948's Sitting Pretty with Clifton Webb, Robert Young and Maureen O'Hara. Betty won a Photoplay Gold Medal for her portrayal of Ginger. Later that year, Betty also was in Apartment for Peggy with William Holden and Jeanne Crain.

Warner Bros. borrowed Betty from Fox in order to have her play the title role in June Bride, another 1948 release, with Bette Davis and Robert Montgomery. Betty made several more movies for Fox and others, including RKO, MGM and Universal. Among the films were Mother Is a Freshman, Father Was a Fullback, Cheaper by the Dozen, Payment on Demand (again with Bette Davis), Many Rivers to Cross and Behind the High Wall.

When her contract with Fox expired, Betty sought work in television, then still in its early days. Her early performances included eight months in The Egg and I, which is often considered to be TV's first comedy serial and was broadcast live from New York five days a week on CBS in 1952.

Back in Hollywood the next year, Betty played the female lead opposite Ray Bolger in Where's Raymond? for a season on ABC-TV. During this time and spanning decades, Betty also performed in live theater productions, including the lead role in Peg O' My Heart and roles in The Moon Is Blue, King of Hearts, Be Your Age, Come Blow Your Horn and Love Letters.

Betty performed in more than two dozen episodes of Matinee Theater, NBC-TV's popular hour-long anthology series that aired, usually live, five days a week. She also continued to work in radio, including for episodes of Lux Radio Theater, Stars Over Hollywood and some installments of Family Theater, as either a lead or host.

Betty was a fixture in television Westerns during the 1950s and 1960s. A partial roundup includes episodes of Bronco, Wagon Train, Cheyenne, Tales of Wells Fargo and Sugarfoot, as well as being co-star for two seasons of Disney Presents: Texas John Slaughter with Tom Tryon.

Betty was still under contract with Disney for Texas John Slaughter when producers for The Andy Griffith Show contacted her about playing Barney Fife's girlfriend, Thelma Lou. Fortunately for Barney, Mayberry and generations of TV viewers, Disney was in the process of winding down its production of Texas John Slaughter and therefore agreed to release Betty to work on the Griffith show.

"I had seen the Griffith show twice before I went to read for the part," Betty recalled. "I remember that I laughed out loud — it was so funny. I didn't do that very often. I thought, Gee, this is really unusual."

Betty always realized that Thelma Lou's role in Mayberry depended on Barney Fife. When Don Knotts decided to depart the series after five seasons in order to make movies for Universal Studios, Betty knew that meant that she would be leaving Mayberry as well.

Betty made one final appearance on the Griffith show when Don Knotts returned in the sixth season for the first of his five guest appearances as Barney. In all, Betty appeared in 26 Griffith episodes, which were originally broadcast between 1961 and 1966 and spanned parts of the show's first six seasons. Of Griffith actors still living at the time of Betty's death, only Ron Howard appeared in more episodes of the series than Betty.

Fans would have to wait more than 20 years, but all was once again right in the world of Mayberry, when Thelma Lou and Barney finally got married in Return to Mayberry, the made-for-TV movie that was a ratings blockbuster for NBC in 1986. "Once we got there to film the movie, everything fell right into place," Betty said. "The spark was still there."

After the Griffith series, Betty continued to work steadily, mostly in television. She played Fred MacMurray's secretary on My Three Sons and Brian Keith's secretary on Family Affair. She also worked with Andy Griffith again when she played Sarah, Ben Matlock's secretary during the first season of Matlock in 1986. She likewise reunited with Ron Howard in 1971 on ABC-TV's short-lived Smith Family, starring Henry Fonda.

Betty also appeared in productions ranging widely from Disney's The Boy Who Stole the Elephant to The Mod Squad and from Little House on the Prairie to The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.

In 1990, Betty began participating in various Andy Griffith Show cast reunion events and Mayberry festivals nationwide, but especially in the Midwest and South. Many of these events also included performances by Betty and her fellow stars. She brought the house down countless times with her renditions of favorite tunes from the American songbook.

Lines often stretched down hallways and around buildings with devoted fans eagerly waiting for their chance to visit with Betty, have their photos taken with her and get an autograph. Betty was legendary for her astounding ability to recognize fans from even many years earlier — frequently calling them by name and asking about other members of their families, also often by name.

"The fans are so sweet," Betty said. "I really love meeting them and having the chance to visit a little bit. They come from all over the country. It's so touching that they still remember my movies and love The Andy Griffith Show like they do. And especially for the Griffith show, there are lots of young children who are fans, too. So, I think the show's popularity is carrying on through the new generations. That makes me happy."

After several years of attending the annual Mayberry Days festival in Andy Griffith's hometown of Mount Airy, Betty decided that the North Carolina town would be a good place for her to live. She made the move away from the stresses of Los Angeles in 2007.

In Betty's honor and echoing Barney Fife's description of Thelma Lou, the local Surry Arts Council annually presents the "You're the Cat's!" Award to recognize individuals who have made especially noteworthy contributions to the Mayberry Days festival.

Along with other members of the cast and crew of The Andy Griffith Show, Betty was a recipient of the TV Land Legend Award in 2004. She was inducted into the Missouri Walk of Fame in Marshfield in 2006, and she was a recipient of the Cherry Blossom Medal at the town's annual Missouri Cherry Blossom Festival the following year.

In 2012, Betty was also an inaugural recipient of a star on the walkway at the entrance of the Andy Griffith Museum. On the occasion of her 90th birthday in 2016, Gov. Pat McCrory granted and Lt. Gov. Dan Forest presented Betty with the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, generally considered to be the State of North Carolina's highest civilian honor.

Betty didn't rest on her laurels. Prior to the pandemic, she greeted fans virtually every month at the Andy Griffith Museum. At the time of her death, Betty had been completing revisions on her autobiography, which is expected to be published posthumously.

A lifelong devout Roman Catholic, Betty was a longtime member of St. Timothy Catholic Church in Los Angeles. After moving to Mount Airy, she joined the local Holy Angels Catholic Church.

Betty Lynn is survived by several cousins, many cherished friends and countless adoring fans. Betty's performances as Thelma Lou and in other roles will continue to entertain generations of appreciative audiences. More than that, all who ever encountered Betty are forever grateful to have known such a truly beautiful soul.

A private burial service is planned in Culver City, CA. A memorial service will be announced at a later date.

In lieu of flowers, donations in Betty's memory may be made to the Betty Lynn Scholarship Endowment (for students pursuing a career in dance or acting) or the Barbara and Emmett Forrest Endowment Fund (for the Andy Griffith Museum and Mayberry Days), both in care of Surry Arts Council, P.O. Box 141, Mount Airy, NC 27030; or Holy Angels Roman Catholic Church, 1208 N Main Street, Mount Airy NC 27030, or a charity of the donor's choice.

You never met a sweeter, kinder human being than Betty Lynn. The actress best known as Barney Fife's girl friend on The Andy Griffith Show died yesterday in Mt. Airy, North Carolina where she'd lived since 2006. I spoke to her about ten days ago and she said she was not feeling well…but she's said that almost every time we've spoken in the last decade. She was 95 and I can't tell you how glad I am that I went to see her back there two years ago.

Betty was my next door neighbor from about the time I was a year and a half old. The photo above of her is one I took from my back yard when I was around fourteen. She was like an unofficial aunt to me.

Playing Barney's love interest Thelma Lou was, of course, only one role in a very long, productive career. This obit in Hollywood Reporter will cue you in on some of the other things she did but one correction: She played in the "Texas John Slaughter" series on ABC called Disneyland, not The Wonderful World of Disney. The latter was one of its names after it shifted over to NBC. I was around six when he did that show…barely able to grasp the concept that the nice lady next door was a TV star.

(And just a few days ago here, I reposted an article about her and that program.)

A few things I should tell you about Betty: One was that she was a fine actress — better than you'd realize if all you knew her from was the Griffith Show. Secondly, she was serious about acting as a profession. It was what she wanted to do, not because it might make her rich or famous but because she was proud of being good at it and always aspiring to be better.

Thirdly, you could not have asked for a better neighbor. Growing up, it was like I had an auxiliary relative right next door. She was deeply religious and apart from acting, the only profession she had ever contemplated was to become a nun. I don't really know what it takes to be a nun but I'll bet she would have been great at it.

I'm going to think about what else I want to write about her here.  I have a lot of history to scroll through…but I guarantee all it'll do is make you wish she'd been your neighbor.

Flipping through channels the other day on my TV, I caught a few seconds of some true crime show where someone was talking about someone else being under "house arrest," meaning they were confined to their homes awaiting a court date. Two thoughts hit me: I'm kind of under "house self-arrest" these days and it ain't that bad.

Leaving aside occasional trips to doctors — I got me a flu shot — I rarely leave my house. Actually, I should say I rarely leave my block since once a day at least, I go out and walk around it. Friends call and suggest outings to restaurants or theaters and I say no. I've tried going out to eat a few times in the last few months and even though it was to familiar places that I like with people I like, I felt very uncomfy and very eager to be home. So I say no to all such invites, including some I'd have loved in non-COVID times.

I'm triple-vaccinated. I have great masks. I'm less worried about getting the virus than I've ever been and I understand that this cannot be a permanent condition and I'm sure it won't be. But still even though The Pandemic is lessening in my area, I am less inclined to leave my house than ever. That's one of the reasons I withdrew as a guest from the Comic-Con Special Edition on Thanksgiving weekend. I didn't want to be anywhere near that far from home.

How do I explain this? I can't…not to myself and certainly not to anyone else. If I didn't have Instacart to bring me supplies, ZOOM to converse with others and a few friends I trust to come visit, I might have a powerful urge to be elsewhere. And like I said, I'm sure I'll ease out of this stay-at-home obsession one of these days. But right now, please don't ask me to come see you perform somewhere or to join a bunch of friends at a great restaurant. I'm happy here under "house arrest."

I like to occasionally check in on Randy "Atlas" Santel. Randy is a bodybuilder who tours the world participating in food challenges — the kind where if you can eat some huge amount of food in some small amount of time, you get the meal free, your name on a wall, a t-shirt and maybe a small cash prize.

How many of these has Randy done? Here's a recent video of Randy and three of his friends finishing off a 25 lb. hamburger in well under an hour. It was Randy's one thousandth "win." So each of them downed approximately 6.25 pounds of beef and bun…mostly bun. And I have trouble eating the entirety of what Five Guys calls a "Little Hamburger"…

8/7/10 was when this adventure was first detailed on this site. This was back when I used to actually go to Costco rather than let Instacart shop for me and bring my order — usually including one rotisserie chicken for me and one for my cleaning lady — to my door.

The piece is also dated by a reference to a lady named Orly Taitz, who was popping up on cable news shows a lot then. Dr. Taitz (she was a dentist) was a Russian-born conspiracy theorist who claimed to have irrefutable evidence than Barack Obama was born in a country other than the United States and was therefore ineligible to serve as President of this nation. Like almost everyone who ever gets referred to as a "conspiracy theorist," her irrefutable evidence turned out to be highly refutable and even people who wished she could prove her claims gave up on her. She is still apparently around, promoting other silly scenarios and she has run for office three times in California and, by an amazing coincidence, lost three times.

So here's another rerun. These will stop soon…

So yesterday I go to a Costco…and it was really a new "low" for me in that I got out for (barely) under a hundred bucks. Usually, I go in to buy just paper towels or just peanut butter and I wind up leaving with eight computers, six snow tires, twelve birdbaths and enough Eucerin to moisturize a rhino into having the skin you love to touch. But this time, I pick up just a few goodies and then head for the rear of the store to get one of the yummy, plump prepared rotisserie chickens to take home. I can live off one of them for a month.

Usually, they have a dozen or so out and in the back, you can see the expert setup where the staff is rotissering (is that a word?) more and it's all timed out so that just as customers have grabbed up the last batch, the next flock comes out. Today however, the procedure hits a snag. Two men, working in tandem and each pushing one of those Hummer-sized Costco shopping carts, come in and denude the display. With the expertise of the Ocean's 11 team cleaning out the Sands, they grab up all the available chickens that are left over from the previous output…and they're there as the latest ones are put forth so they seize all of them, as well.

They have about 23 chickens plus about a half-dozen orders of BBQ ribs in their two carts as they head for the checkout, leaving zero chickens for the rest of us. I am among about a dozen shoppers who are left to stare longingly at empty shelves. One of us inquires how long it might be before there are more available and the answer turns out to be about 40 minutes. This is dangerous, at least for me. If I hang around a Costco for 40 minutes, I will buy thirty crates of A-1 Sauce, nine more computers, enough blouses to clothe Paraguay and at least one Goodyear Blimp, except it will say "Kirkland" on the side.

Others around me are outraged. Most expected to carry home a hot Seasoned Chicken to feed the family that evening and their plans are awry. They begin demanding immediate chickens and the beleaguered rotisserer (that can't be a word) is having trouble explaining that he cannot furnish more cooked hens on demand; that they require a certain amount of prep time. One lady in particular — our Self-Appointed Spokeswoman — proclaims she speaks for us all. We are all good, loyal, longtime Costco patrons and we are incensed that our dinner menus are inoperative. I don't recall voting for her and I don't think she has the proper outlook on the situation. She seems to think that if one is loud enough and angry enough, Costco can make fully-cooked poultry instantly appear.

Over comes a manager or some other official who's heard the shouting and also noticed that customers who couldn't care less about barbecued fowl are crowding around to watch the dinner theater. He tries to placate this woman who will simply not be placated. He explains that it simply takes X number of minutes to cook more of what we want. This does not satisfy the Orly Taitz of barbecued chickens. She insists that he grovel a bit, admit that the system is seriously f'ed up and in dire need of correction, and then present her with an immediate chicken-to-go. Or else.

The Costco boss-person insists the system works fine, 99% of the time. It just doesn't work if two guys come in and buy 23 chickens all at once, which in all his years of managing has never before happened. He explains that Costco sells no chicken that is more than two hours old; that once a hen has gone untaken that long, it's removed from the shelf and either discarded or stripped of its meat to make Costco's chicken soup. With the patience of Job or maybe even an Obama supporter, he tells her that it's all expertly timed for the normal traffic and that if they made more than they do, they'd wind up throwing out too many unsold chix and have to raise the price. And of course there's no guarantee that if there had been ten more chickens there, those two fellows wouldn't have purchased 33 chickens.

He is just explaining why Costco couldn't limit the number of chickens per person when I notice that standing next to me among the amused spectators, is a man with about fifteen Kirkland Seasoned Chickens in his cart. It's one of the two gents who'd bought out the available supply and it looks like he's returned to the scene of the crime to see if and when more might be available. I turn to him and say, "See what you caused?"

The man chuckles, then hears our unofficial spokeswoman start to ratchet it up to yelling and insulting the manager's sanity and parentage. Out of some combination of guilt and peacekeeping, the man with all the birds takes one from his cart, thrusts it at the lady and says, "Here…go home and feed your family." Then before other chicken-cravers can pounce on his stash, he turns and pushes his cart away. As he passes me, he says, "You want one, too?" I say yes and he hands me one and then gets the hell outta there. I look at all the unfulfilled folks who desperately wanted what I now have, see the expression on their faces and decide to also go and pay.

In the checkout line, I find myself standing behind the loud lady. She is still outraged in a manner that suggests to me this is how she is about everything in life. At the moment, she is outraged that she had to make a fuss to get what she should have had all along…but to me she looks kinda proud of herself.

I start to think, "I don't know how people can go through life being that rude, especially about something as mundane as a rotisserie chicken." But then I slap and correct myself: They do it because it works. For some people, getting your way is more important than what you get, and "winning" can justify any means. Even though her rudeness indirectly got me what I wanted, I wish it hadn't turned out like that.

Then again, as I'm writing this, I'm lunching on a damn fine sandwich made out of leftover chicken.

The other day, I saw this on the side of an AT&T phone truck.  I think everyone should be wearing masks in public except maybe these people.

I subscribed today to Apple TV.  And even if I don't watch Ted Lasso and Schmigadoon! and all those other shows that have been recommended to me, it's worth the five bucks a month for me just to see Jon Stewart's new series. A new one drops every other Thursday and here's an excerpt from the one that debuted yesterday. It's all about freedom and the odd ways people these days define it and what they will and won't do to defend it.

A rerun. This ran here on 10/26/14 and the only thing I have to add to it is that Henry Kloss died in January of 2002. If you'd like to know more about this man and his extraordinary career, here's a link to his New York Times obit.

Around 1982, I decided the time had come to purchase a projection TV — one of those big, wall-sized jobbies. The Advent was the best-selling brand but there were a few dozen makes and models on the market. Which one to buy, which one to buy?

Fortunately, I had by then developed my foolproof, never miss, infallible method of determining which item of audio or video equipment is the one to purchase. It involves careful and meticulous research, a comprehensive understanding of the technology and specifications of every product, a full and exhaustive working knowledge of all the manufacturers, their track records and — most crucial — staying close enough to the industry to be aware of what's in the pipeline and will soon be released.

My method involves all of this. But you'll notice that I did not say that I, personally, do any of it.

No. What I personally do is to call my pal Marc Wielage and just buy whatever he tells me to buy. He does all that stuff. Marc is a highly-respected video engineer and author of countless articles and reviews that cover not only consumer audio and/or video equipment but professional hardware, as well. I've known him for something like forty years and I've never known him to be wrong about anything except, obviously, the proper spelling of the name "Mark."

So I called him, told him what I had in mind and asked him what he said was the easiest question he'd fielded in months. The answer was: "The Kloss Novabeam."

I replied, "Kloss Novabeam? Not the Advent?"

"No," he moaned as if I'd asked him if I could get decent TV reception on a G.E. toaster oven. "The Novabeam is the best projection TV out today, by far." At that moment, I'm sure he was right.

He explained to me that the Kloss Novabeam was designed and manufactured by Henry Kloss, a legendary figure in the fields of, first, audio technology and, more recently, home video. Among many other credits, Mr. Kloss was one of the inventors of the acoustic suspension loudspeaker, the high selectivity FM radio, the first audio cassette unit to employ Dolby B noise reduction, and the first successful audio product to utilize transistors, the Model 11 portable phonograph.

In the area of home video, he had presided over the invention and marketing of the original Advent projection televisions. Then he left Advent — reportedly, not of his own free will — and began marketing the Kloss Novabeam in direct competition. It was, Marc assured me, superior in every way to the Advent.

"Okay," I said. "Any idea where I can buy a Kloss Novabeam?"

"Only one place you can get it in town," Marc responded. "Go to Federated Electronics. They have the exclusive in L.A. But one thing — if you go in there, they're gonna try to sell you an Advent. They have tons of them piled up in their warehouses but they sell the Novabeams as fast as they can get them in."

The next day, I walked into the Projection TV section of my nearest Federated store and, sure enough, the salesguy immediately tried to sell me an Advent. Marc knows of what he speaks.

"I'm interested in the Kloss Novabeam," I said, looking around. "I don't seem to see one on display here…"

"The Advent is a very fine piece of equipment," he proclaimed. "It's the best-selling make. In fact, I just had a customer stop in and tell me how happy he is with the Advent I sold him."

"I'd like to see the Kloss Novabeam, please."

"Just take a look at this Advent. I'll put a tape on and you'll see how vivid the colors are, how bright the picture —"

"Kloss Novabeam, please."

"Oh, and the Advent has some other great features…"

"Kloss Novabeam," I said.

"Another thing about the Advent. It's real easy to get parts for them and…"

It was only when I started for the exit that he sighed and led me into a back room. There, sure enough, a working Kloss Novabeam was on display.

"We keep it back here," he explained. "If we had it out there next to the Advent, we'd never sell another Advent."

"Fine," I said. "I'll take one."

— only I didn't take one. I had it delivered. Those suckers were big.

The Kloss Novabeam worked just as Marc had said it would, which is not to say I ever doubted his counsel. The unit was in two parts. One was a big, six-foot (diagonally-measured) screen which took up an entire wall of what, thereafter, I could only refer to as my TV Room. The image was projected onto it from three lenses — one red, one blue, one green — mounted in a console that stood in the center of the room, something like a small coffee table.

For months, my guests and I would sit by that small coffee table and enjoy TV shows and movies blown up with amazing brightness and clarity. The only drawback was that, outta force o' habit, I was always pointing the remote control at the TV screen to no apparent effect. One had to remember to point the remote at the small coffee table since that, not the screen, was the TV set.

All was peachy until one day, about eleven months after my Novabeam had entered my life. Suddenly, its picture became dull, blurry and overly green. When I watched The CBS Evening News with Dan Rather on it, it looked as if Dan and the newsmakers of the day were submerged in a big vat of lime jello. And now that I think of it, if Dan had actually done things like that, he'd still be on the air.

Amazingly — for when appliances go kablooey, you usually discover the warranty expired ten minutes before — my Novabeam was still covered. I called Federated and they dispatched a gentleman who knew approximately as much about fixing Novabeams as I know about fixing a ruptured aorta. Matter of fact, in a head-to-head contest, I'd lay serious money that I could learn and perform quadruple-bypass surgery before this clown could locate the Novabeam "on" button.

"Gotta take it into shop," he finally announced. And it was not until he put the coffee table half (only) of my Novabeam on his truck and drove off that something dawned on me. I had not heard him say anything about bringing it back from the shop.

Indeed, he did not. No one did. Days passed and I saw nothing of my Novabeam console. And when I tried calling Federated, the following happened…

1. I would wait on hold for 5-10 minutes before someone came on the line.
2. I would explain my situation to the person and they would take down my invoice number and name and say, "Let me check on it and I'll be right back with you."
3. They would put me on hold.

And that, by God, was it. #4 was me surrendering after a long, long wait and hanging up. Once placed on hold, I would remain there indefinitely, listening to tinny phone-Muzak. Not once did they ever come back.

I put one such call on my speakerphone and sat here working, waiting for Godot or a human being to get back on the line. Neither did. The first time, I admitted defeat after 45 minutes. Subsequent calls, I surrendered after 10 or 15 minutes of sitting there, wondering why a firm that specialized in high-end audio and electronics had such crappy hold music.

With each attempt, I would increasingly impress upon the Federated employee how I was always being placed forever on hold when I called, never to return. Each time, the person on the other end would assure me that they would be right back with me. They would then put me on hold and immediately retire and move to Florida — or something of the sort.

Finally, I had to act. I phoned Wielage again and asked him what to do. He gave me the phone number in Massachusetts of a Vice-President of the Kloss Novabeam Company. I called and explained the situation to the man who said, "Let me put you on hold…"

I yelled into the phone, "DON'T PUT ME ON HOLD! I never come back from there!"

But he swore he'd return…and that turned out to be a fib. I never spoke to that man again. However, less than a minute after he'd sent me to Limbo, someone else came on the line and said, "Tell me the problem."

I asked, "To whom am I speaking, please?"

"Kloss," the man said. "Henry Kloss." Well, that was impressive.

Amazed I'd reached the Head Honcho so quickly, I blurted out the story. I got as far as the third or fourth time they left me twisting in the wind on hold when he interrupted: "How long did they make you wait?"

I told him. He sounded politely skeptical. "You sure you're not exaggerating?"

"Mr. Kloss," I said, "I will give you the number and my invoice data and you call them. Pretend you're me and see what they do to you. But you might want to send out for pizza first."

"I've got a better idea," he said. "You call and I'll listen in. Give me the phone number." I did and he switched us over to three-way calling and dialed the service number of Federated Electronics. It was like I was phoning them again but he was eavesdropping.

A cheery young lady only kept me on hold about two minutes before taking down all my data, saying "I'll be right back" and putting me back on hold, where she thought I belonged. As we listened to the bad music, I said to Mr. Kloss, "My phone has a little timer. It's now been two minutes and —"

He interrupted. "— and forty seconds. I'm running a stopwatch on it." We made idle chit-chat about how much, apart from this, I loved my Novabeam…and we waited. And waited. And waited some more.

How long they would have left us there, we'll never know. After five minutes, Henry Kloss said, "This is unacceptable" and hung up on them. I was still on the line, feeling vindicated in my claim. He then told me, "Okay, just listen" and made another three-way call. This time, it was his turn to talk, mine to snoop.

I shall now attempt to re-create that call. I do not recall the name of the executive involved and I'm cleaning up the language but otherwise, this is pretty much what was said. The first voice you hear with be that of the switchboard operator…

WOMAN #1: Federated Electronics.

KLOSS: Peter Johnson, please.

WOMAN #1: One moment…

(short pause, bad music)

WOMAN #2: Peter Johnson's office.

KLOSS: Let me speak to Peter. This is Henry Kloss.

WOMAN #2: Mr. Kloss, Mr. Johnson is in a conference at the moment. Can he get back to you?

KLOSS: No. Interrupt his conference. No, wait. First, I want you to take down some information. Mark, give her your name, invoice number, all that stuff…

(I quickly furnish the requested info, then I shut up.)

KLOSS: Okay. Now, interrupt his conference. Tell him Henry Kloss is on the line and I'm furious and he'd better take my call right this minute if he knows what's good for him.

WOMAN #2: (a bit shaky) I'll tell him.

(another short pause, more bad music)

JOHNSON: (dripping with friendliness) Henry! How the hell are you?

KLOSS: Furious, that's how the hell I am. Two months ago, a customer named Mark Evanier had his Novabeam picked up by you for servicing and he's never seen it, never heard a word from you. When he calls up to inquire, you put him on hold and ignore him.

JOHNSON: Oh no, we don't do that…

KLOSS: You just did it to me.

JOHNSON: Well, we've had a little shortage in the service division…

KLOSS: That's not my problem and it's not his problem. I want him to get his Novabeam back immediately. Your secretary has all the information.

JOHNSON: I will personally look into it and make sure he gets it back in the next few days.

KLOSS: No. Not the next few days. You've had it for two months. You don't get a few more days. I'm phoning Mr. Evanier in one hour. If he does not have a working Novabeam in his home, I'm canceling every damn contract I have with you. I will not have my products sold by a company that treats a customer like that. My name is on that product.

JOHNSON: Henry, be reasonable. We may not be able to find or fix his Novabeam in an hour…

KLOSS: Then give him a new one. At your expense. Now, you have one hour. Goodbye.

He clicked off that call, then directed his attention to me. "Talk to you in one hour," he said. And he hung up.

Fifty-four minutes later, I heard a squeal of tires outside. I opened my door and two men were sprinting up my front walkway with a brand-new Kloss Novabeam. They were just hooking it up and testing the picture when the phone rang again. The entire conversation went as follows — and this one, I am quoting verbatim:

ME: Hello?

KLOSS: This is Kloss. You got it?

ME: I got it. Thanks.

KLOSS: Call me personally if you have any trouble in the future.

And with that, he clicked off and I never had to call him again. His product served me well for about another ten years…and while that's not as long as I might have liked, it did manage to outlive the Federated Electronics chain. Gee, I wonder how a big company like that could possibly go out of business.

Two weeks ago at the Tony Awards, they featured three wonderful duets. Here — in case you didn't see them or want to see them again — are those duets…

I have many an e-mail asking what I think about a current Superman storyline dealing with bisexuality. There are a lot of opinions out there, many from folks who aren't informed enough about this matter to know that it isn't Clark Kent who's "come out." It's Jon Kent, offspring of Clark Kent and Lois Lane in a storyline that will probably be forgotten in two years, if not sooner.

But what do I think about it? I think I don't really care about it. Haven't read it. Probably won't. It, like when Superman "died" in 1993 and other lucrative properties have "died" for a while to boost circulation, is temporary.

And I'm not a believer in the notion that super-hero comics need to deal with every aspect of our lives. What I do believe is that consenting adults should be free to marry, cohabitate, breed, adopt, whatever as long as — to use Ronald Reagan's old line which he didn't seem to believe in — they don't scare the horses.

But I don't think super-hero comics are a good place to discuss many aspects of The Human Condition. That's because they aren't about human beings. I don't think they ever deal with death effectively because, as noted, they're about characters who don't die…or if they do, they don't stay dead for long. None of the ones I read that worked 9/11 into their storylines seemed to be at all effective. In the DC or Marvel Universes, the Earth is saved from complete annihilation two or three times a week so how do you give a real sense of horror to a bunch of terrorists flying planes into the World Trade Center?

I remember a comic which depicted New Yorkers running in a panic from Ground Zero, terrified of the smoke and dust and debris, understandably afraid a building was about to collapse on them. The real-world news footage of that was chilling. In the comic book, it was a scene we see so often, it was like, "Big deal! People ran in a panic from Superman on the cover of Action Comics #1."

Don't get me wrong: I love comic books. I've probably read way more of them than most people reading this and I love writing them. I just think the unreality of the world in which so many of them take place might not be the right venue in which to address every real-world subject. Human sexuality is a fascinating topic to me. Superhuman sexuality? Not so much. Do you remember those scenes where Superboy was sad because he couldn't get a date? I wanted to yell at him, "You're from another planet, you can fly, you can pick up a tank with one hand and you're invulnerable! Your life is very different from mine!" So is that of Jon Kent, whose father came from the planet Krypton.

So that's one reason I don't care about bisexuality in the DC Universe. Another is that I don't even know who many of those characters are these days. So many different people handle them with so many different ideas about how to make them hip and today and relevant that I often don't recognize Superman as Superman or Batman as Batman or so forth. But maybe that's another topic for another time.

I'll just recall a lesson from a writing teacher I once had who said, "A character is defined by what they do but also by what they don't do." When a character is controlled by too many diverse hands — writers but also producers and editors and marketing consultants and corporate officials — I wonder if anyone even has the power to say, "No, no! Our character wouldn't do that!"

Here's another veteran comedian on The Ed Sullivan Show. It's 1966 and the comic is Jackie Kahane. I knew Jackie a little bit and when he passed away in 2001, I wrote this about him here…

The last five years of Elvis Presley's life, his opening act was Mr. Kahane, a comedian who also, in his day, opened for the likes of Wayne Newton, Tony Bennett and just about every other singing headliner.

Amazingly, this was a side job for Jackie, whose main income then came from managing comedy writers. A lot of them were, like Jackie, Canadians…but he also managed American writers and was often urging me to join his stable. I never did, but I enjoyed lunching with Jackie and hearing colorful (often, unquotable) tales of Elvis and Wayne and Tony and Show Biz in general. He seemed to do well for his clients…and he also performed a special service for some. He was a "front." You see, TV shows produced in Canada like to hire Canadian writers because it qualifies them for special investment credits from the government which can make it a lot easier to produce something.

Sometimes, they'd hire one of Jackie's American writers but Jackie, who retained Canadian citizenship, would be the official writer of record. As a result, he got screen credit on an awful lot of shows that were actually written by other folks. (Bizarre, which starred John Byner, was one) I thought that was kinda sleazy but otherwise, Jackie — who died Monday at the age of 79 — was a class act all the way.

He told me stories about doing Ed's show, too. The show was done live on Sunday evenings and earlier in the day, there was a full run-through in front of an audience that, Jackie said, never laughed at anything. "During snow season," he said, "they were just derelicts seeking a place to get out of the cold for a few hours." After that, Ed himself would cut down your act because it hadn't gotten much response from the derelicts. I wonder what Jackie's act was like at the afternoon run-through.,,

For reasons I'm sure you can guess, I don't expect to go to Las Vegas — or really, anywhere — for quite a while. But I may now have a special new reason to travel there. Nothing has been officially announced but several sources are saying that the bevy of great restaurants in Caesars Palace will soon be joined by the first outside-New-York outlet of Peter Luger's Steakhouse. We shall be following this rumor with more than a little interest.

This one was first posted here on June 30, 2016…

Like everyone who's no longer in school, I had a lot of different teachers back when I was — some good teachers, some not so good. Quite a few of them had no impact on me at all other than to drag me through some class that I was required to take. I suppose the one whose teachings had the most lasting impact on me was Mrs. Grandholme, who taught me touch-typing. I have never used anything taught to me in the realm of Physics or Chemistry but at this very moment, I am using a skill I owe in large part to Mrs. Grandholme.

The runner-up would probably be Mr. Cline, who taught English and History at Ralph Waldo Emerson Junior High. He imparted little useful info to me but he still left a lasting impression. It didn't have much to do with English or History and I'm still trying decide if it was for the better.

First thing I should do here is to give you a visual. He looked very much like Norman Lear, minus the silly hat. Here — study this picture…

Got him? Okay. Then I should tell you this about Mr. Cline: He was a very funny teacher and oh, how he loved to perform in front of the class. I think deep down, he wanted to be an actor or a comedian…and one year when he emceed a big talent show and fund-raising event in the school auditorium, he was terrific. Campus legend had it that years earlier, one of those events was hosted by Jerry Lewis. I wasn't there to see that but if it did happen, I'll bet Jerry wasn't half as funny as Mr. Cline. (Come to think of it, I've seen Jerry not be half as funny as cold sores.)

Third thing I have to tell you about Mr. Cline: A lot of kids in his classes really hated him and at times, I was one of them.

I found myself, not by choice, in a number of his classes over the years. He started each one the same way: "You can be a pupil or you can be a student." The difference in his mind was that a pupil just sits there and listens and does the work and waits to be taught. A student wants to learn and actively participates and does more than is expected. "I teach my classes for students," he said over and over, putting a special, revered emphasis on the word "students." To that end, he did things like this…

One Monday in History class, he assigned us to read Chapter Four in our textbooks and warned us there would be a test the next day. And indeed on Tuesday, there was a test — on Chapter Five. Because a student would have read ahead.

Another time, he assigned Chapter Six and most of us — by now, hip to the game — read Six and Seven. The test the next day was actually on Chapter Six but the test consisted of one line: "Write down five interesting things you learned from reading that chapter." That's harder to do than you imagine…and I failed because two of the five things I wrote down were actually in Chapter Seven. Because a student would have remembered which pages were which.

I mean, after all! What good is a piece of knowledge if you don't remember which chapter of one book it appeared in?

Yet another time, he assigned us to write an essay that was due on Friday and then on Thursday, he announced he would collect them then. Anyone who couldn't hand his or her essay in a day early would receive a lower grade when he or she did. Because a student wouldn't have waited until the last minute to complete it.

I'm sure his motives were good. I'm sure he thought he was encouraging us to become more inquisitive and serious about learning. But it sure didn't seem to me like that was the outcome.

It seemed to me like he was prompting us to think of everything as a big game where the person in charge — in this case, him — can change the rules whenever he feels like it. Life works that way at times and I suppose that could be a valuable lesson to keep in mind…but it got to be a terrible distraction from any possible actual learning. When I did read the textbook, I wasn't thinking "What can I learn from this?" I was thinking, "How will Mr. Cline screw with us over this material?"

I don't remember very much that I learned in those classes of his. What I do remember are his silly little gotchas like the one in an English class near the end of the semester. He passed out forms and told us to write down the names and brief summaries of all the books we'd read that term. No particular quantity of reading had ever been assigned to us but a student would have been reading many books all year. So we had to make out a list and then he graded us on the quantity of books and also on whether he thought we were reading at the proper level.

I got an "A" on that one, partly because I had read about five good books and partly because I was good at making up phony book titles and fake author names for about seven more. He couldn't very well fault my choice of books he'd never heard of so he gave me high marks for them. I had to resist the temptation to go to him and say that while a student might not have fibbed about what books he'd read, a good teacher would have gone to the school library and looked up titles with which he was not familiar.

I "won" that skirmish but I didn't fare so well the time he ordered us to hand in the notes we'd taken on his previous day's lecture. He hadn't told us to take notes but, he said, a student would have taken extensive, detailed notes. So he was going to grade us on how many notes we'd taken and how detailed they were.

I had taken almost none and what I had written down was in a shorthand style that only I would understand: Key words to jog my memory instead of full quotes and sentences. Mr. Cline had never lectured us on any "right" way to take notes but we were faulted if we hadn't written them the way he thought they should be taken. That time, I decided I had to actually confront him.

After class, while everyone else went to lunch, I went to him and said, "I don't understand why I'm getting graded on a basis other than whether I do the work you assign and understand it. I get the feeling you're going to flunk me because I'm wearing a green shirt and you suddenly announce that a student would have worn a blue one today."

I'll say this for Mr. Cline: You could talk to him like this. I couldn't have had this conversation with a lot of my teachers because many of them had this "Me Teacher, Me Know Everything" attitude. Not Mr. Cline. He prided himself on encouraging his charges to think and question and I respected him for that even though I often thought he was achieving the opposite of that goal.

He explained to me that day why he taught the way he taught and stated, as if quoting something in the Bill of Rights, "A student is someone who takes detailed, extensive notes."

I said, "How about this? A student is someone who learns. You know, a minimum-wage stenographer could have taken down every word you said and not retain one of them. Which of these would you prefer I be?"

I remember that moment. I remember several such moments in my childhood — moments that made me realize that grown-ups and adults and parents and people in power weren't always right.

They weren't always wrong, either. It was important not to fall into the trap of thinking that, too…but it was important to me to fully embrace the concept that they weren't always right and that I needed to question what they said. (Later, it was important to learn — or at least try to learn — to do that in a constructive, non-confrontational way. I still sometimes have trouble with that part.)

When I said that line to Mr. Cline about the minimum-wage stenographer, he looked like I'd slapped him. Then he stammered back a reply: "If you don't take detailed notes, how will you retain what you learn in my class?"

I said, "By listening instead of writing. Ask me a question about what you said in class yesterday."

He asked a question and I managed to answer it correctly with a close-to-verbatim recitation of his actual words. Some of that was luck but I do have a pretty good memory. It's not flawless and there are times when it simply doesn't record things in the first place. But it's pretty good now and it was even better then, especially when I was listening instead of writing things down. And no, I don't remember what question he asked me and I don't remember what I said in reply that day.

As I'm explaining here, I don't remember much of anything Mr. Cline taught me. Just these things I'm telling you now because the long-forgotten things were of no apparent use to me. This "lesson" was.

I think after I answered his question correctly, I pointed to my head and said something to him like, "I took my notes up here. Would you rather I'd taken them on paper instead? Because I can't do both and like every single student you ever had, the minute I'm out of your class, my notebook's going in the wastebasket. With luck though, I'll keep my brain with me for the rest of my life."

During my school years, I argued a lot with teachers and I lost a lot of the arguments, often (but not always) because I was wrong. In that same high school, I got into a nastier-than-it-should-have-been quarrel with an Art Teacher who was very nice and caring and who didn't deserve the crap I gave her over some assignments to design what they then called "psychedelic art." I was politically very conservative back then and really, really uncomfy with all the glorification I saw around me — this was the late sixties — of drugs.

Today…well, today I still don't like 'em but my attitude now is what adults do in private is their business as long as it doesn't harm others. Even if I'd been right in '68, I was wrong to connect that to Mrs. Nichols urging us to create designs not unlike those by artists whose work was then described as "drug-inspired." I lost that spat and I deserved to.

I was wrong about a lot of things in high school. In fact, as I came to realize, high school is a great place to be wrong about things. Get as much of it as you can out of your system then because it matters a lot less there than it will after you've graduated and you're trying to arrange the rest of your life. Now when I'm wrong, I usually pay a much higher price.

To this day, I still think though that I was right with Mr. Cline and his silly (to me) way of teaching…or maybe partially right because maybe his method worked for some of the kids in his class. Keeping us off balance the way he did though seemed counter-productive to me. It caused me to not think of the material and to try to figure out the catch, the hidden trick, the way in which if I did exactly what I was supposed to do, I was going to be told I'd done the wrong thing.

And to this day, I often have that suspicion in my mind. When someone gives me an assignment that's due on Tuesday, I think, "Do I really have until Tuesday or are they going to fault me for not handing it on Monday?" Sometimes, I even forget that I'll be a hero if I hand it in on Thursday or Friday but it's exactly what they want.

I still haven't decided if this is a good thing or a bad thing. But it's one of those and either way, I have Mr. Cline to thank for it.

Our pal Charlie Frye favors us with a little Four Coin Fosse…