5 dozen liquor jugs
2004-06-03, 5:22 p.m.

Once in a while, a place comes back to me with a sharpness that almost hurts. And it doesn�t have to have any particularly emotional significance, either. Today, it was the Western Auto Store in my hometown. Now I don�t have any kind of overtly sentimental attachment to a Western Auto. But all the same, it rushed into my head complete, intact, circa 1975. The sharp rubber smell of fan belts and bike tires. The play of the dust motes in the late afternoon sun pouring through the big front window. The clang of the cowbell on the front door, and the squeak of the old wooden floor. Tall, buzz-cutted Mr. Hall, who never said much, but who never seemed to be too busy to wait on a little kid. They sold kites and model kits and shiny Western Flyer bikes, fishing tackle and assorted other items so necessary to being a kid in that time and place. (small town in Iowa, mid-1970s). Hm. Memories.

Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs . Muuuccchhh better than �The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog�, when it comes to pangrams. Too bad nobody uses typewriters anymore. It would be fun to go shopping and leave that sentence sticking out of every sample model in town.

That example has 32 letters, and a �perfect� pangram would only have 26. But to me, there is more perfection in a 32-letter sentence that makes sense (and is kind of funny!) than in a 26-letter line that is barely a sentence at all. Example: "Blowzy night-frumps vex'd Jack Q."

I love this entry. It has nothing to do with the real world.

Except for this part. Jim died 25 years ago today.