A little bit of this, a little bit of that and a few things I learned on the way to someplace else.

The winner, by a nose

The familiar singsong of a child reciting the alphabet caught my ear as I wandered through a department store. A charming little girl was entertaining herelf as her stroller-pushing mother sifted through the sale rack.

I loved the sweet-voiced rendition of the familiar melody - “Now I know my ABCs, next time won’t you sing with me?”

Still, it made me sigh.

Seems like no time since the grandtwins were singing the same song. Now, wonder of wonders, those five-year-old brothers can READ.

How does it happen?

I know. I know. Excellent teachers, wonderful parents, curious little brains - they all work together, then, boom! As if by magic, a reader is born.

But while reading has always been a great pleasure to me, it remains a perfect mystery. One day, it seems, children look at letters and just see, well, squiggles. Then, a little practice and the squiggles are recognized as an H or an A or a T. Before you know it, they look at H-A-T and say “hat.”

That may not be magic, exactly, but it feels like it.

Sunday night, in a restaurant that hands out crayons and coloring books, Aaron stopped coloring a face blue and announced proudly, “I can spell nose. N - O - S.”

I hated to have to tell him about the silent E.

His brother Nathan didn’t miss a beat. “I can spell toes,” he said confidently. “T-O-S-E!”

Nose, nos. Toes, tose.

Compared to spelling, reading is a piece of cake.

Barbara Walters , eat your heart out

The good folks at Faith Baptist Church are preparing a new movie and picked a chilly Monday morning to do some filming near West Point Dam. You’ll have to wait a few days to read writer Sherri Brown’s story about the project, but I’ll whet your appetite.

“They have a new Jesus and I interviewed him,” she wrote in an e-mail.

I immediately broke the 11th Commandment: That Shalt Not Covet Thy Co-Worker’s Interview.”

“I’ve been working 30 years and never got to interview Jesus,” I whined.

“I interviewed the old Jesus, too,” Sherri shot back.

My reply was simple. “If you interviewed Jesus, twice, your day is going a whole lot better than mine.”

A short time later, a motorist who’d driven by the dam at the time of the filming called asking if we knew what was going on - a bunch of folks in biblical garb by the side of the lake.

He was pleased to hear it was a movie.

“I thought it might have been the Second Coming and I missed it,” he said.

Good for what ails you

The Chipley Historical Society of Pine Mountain had a wonderful fundraising idea. They’ve gathered and re-published dozens of articles that founding member Lillian D. Champion wrote about Pine Mountain folks and goings-on in the 1950s and 1960s.

The spiffy little collection of articles from newspapers in Columbus, Manchester, Pine Mountain and LaGrange is called “Pine Mountain Re-Views, Stories by the Plumber’s Daughter.” Lillian wrote many of her stories on an old Royal typewriter while keeping account books for her father’s plumbing and electric business.

Many of the stories are gems - some are hilarious, others poignant, a few are hair-raising. Folks who lived in Troup or Harris counties in those days will find many familiar names. Folks who didn’t can get the flavor of that fading time through Lillian’s work.

My favorite story, from October 1960, is called ” That fishing doctor from Pine Mountain.” Here are the opening lines:

“In Pine Mountain, this notice appears quite frequently on the office door of the town’s only medical doctor: “The Good Lord made six times as much water as He did dry land, so as any fool can plainly see, He meant for man to fish six times as much as he works.”

Bet the bream and crappie are biting … somewhere.

Readers may contact Andrea Lovejoy at editor@lagrangenews.com