from memories of a catholic girlhood / Mussolini

Mary Snyder Behrens / Backpack 2026

Mary MacCarthy, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1957), p. 50—

It is our parents, normally, who not only teach us our family history but who set us straight on our own childhood recollections, telling us that this cannot have happened the way we think it did and that that, on the other hand, did occur, just as we remember it, in such and such a summer when So-and-So was our nurse. My own son, Reuel, for instance, used to be convinced that Mussolini had been thrown off a bus in North Truro, on Cape Cod, during the war. This memory goes back to one morning in 1943 when, as a young child, he was waiting with his father and me beside the road in Welfleet to put a departing guest on the bus to Hyannis. The bus came through, and the bus driver leaned down to shout the latest piece of news: "They've thrown Mussolini out." Today, Reuel knows that Mussolini was never ejected from a Massachusetts bus, and he also knows how he got that impression.

Rainbow / machine-stitched appliqué and thread

Mary Snyder Behrens © 1986

Above Mary Snyder Behrens, Rainbow Sleeves (1986). Machine-stitched appliqué and thread on found fabric. 19"h x 29"w. Collection of the Racine Art Museum, Racine WI.

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H.H. Green, Simple Life of a Commoner, 1911—

But of all the things I saw that day, there was one that so deeply interested me that I have never forgotten its exact appearance. It was a wonder to a boy of my age and would be of considerable interest even now. It was just a common ordinary pocket knife with a bone handle and blades of steel, but it contained 1,851 [because it was made to be shown for the first time at the Crystal Palace Exhibition in London, the first World's Fair, in 1851] of those steel blades, from one to two feet long and proportionally wide and thick, on down of all sorts and sizes till the smallest could not have been more than a quarter of an inch long. They were all open from the handle and stood out in all directions like the quills on a porcupine's back when he is on a war footing. Up to that time that was the greatest sight I had even seen. I have often thought since, if that knife had been lost for a thousand years and then found by some antiquarian, what a time the wiseacres might have had ever the monstrous size of a man, who, in the middle of the nineteenth century carried a pocket knife like that.

cockroaches in the pentagon / estimated number

Source

LEWIS H. LAPHAM, et al., The Harper’s Index Book (New York : Henry Holt, 1986)—

Percentage of Americans who never read books: 45. Estimated number of cockroaches in the Pentagon : 2,000,000. Percentage of Americans who say they don’t know how they could get along without Scotch tape: 46. Number of plastic pink flamingos sold in the US in 1985: 450,000.

beak of the pelican holds more than his belican

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Dixon Lanier Merritt, Nashville Banner (Nashville TN), April 22, 1913—

Oh, a wondrous bird is the pelican!

His beak holds more than his belican.

He takes in his beak

Food enough for a week.

But I'll be darned if I know how the helican.

38th year of a rare and fortuitous marriage

As of this very day, Mary and I have been married for 38 years. We've lived all over the country, traveled abroad for the pleasure of work, and have come to know so many people. It is a joy to be with her, increasingly, with each passing day. How wonderfully fortunate we are—as is tiny Lola, only the most recent of the amusing and curious creatures who have shared our daily lives. What is the secret? In part, it is because we see and think alike.

salutations / tipping the hat mere semantics

In John Pollack’s The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More than Some Antics (New York: Gotham Books, 2011), there is an account of a famous French gourmand named Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimod de La Reynière (1758-1837). According to Pollack—

As a young man, Grimod was known around Paris for wearing a mechanical wig that would tip politely, and apparently automatically, as ladies passed.

In reading that, I was reminded of a US patent (shown above), No. 556,248, titled Saluting Device, that was filed in 1896 by someone named J.C. Boyle. It seems to be more or less comparable to Grimod’s “saluting wig,” but in this case of course it’s a tip of the hat.

Here is a newspaper account of  Boyle's invention from The Democrat (Scotland Neck NC) on April 9, 1896, p. 1—

A patent has been granted J.C. Boyle of Spokane WA, for a "saluting device." It is a machine worn in the top of the hat. All you have to do is to slightly incline the head, and as the head starts forward the machine lefts the hat a little, holds it just long enough and in a graceful curve lets it back on your head.

Later that year, the following note was published in the Spokane Chronicle on September 30, p. 4—

J.C. Boyle, a member of the Drumheller Packing Company, but whose chief claim to notoriety rests in the fact that he invented the patent hat lift that removes the old labor of lifting the hat by hand, arrived home last evening after a prolonged visit to Kansas City and other portions of the east, where he has been for his health.

picked it up and then flung it under the seat

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Above Roy R. Behrens, Root Canal (© 2021). Digital montage.

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Ann Barr and Paul Levy, The Official Foodie Handbook. Arbor House, 1985—

When Marilyn Monroe was married to [playwright] Arthur Miller, his mother always made matzo ball soup. After the tenth time, Marilyn said, “Gee Arthur, these matzo balls are really nice, but isn’t there any other part of the matzo you can eat?”

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George and Weedon Grossmith, The Diary of a Nobody. London: J.M. Dent, 1940, pp. 55-56—

I was leaning out of the box [at the theatre], when my tie—a little black bow which fastened on to the stud by means of a new patent—fell into the pit below. A clumsy man, not noticing it, had his foot on it for ever so long before he discovered it. He then picked it up and eventually flung it under the next seat in disgust. …I felt quite miserable. Mr. James [a companion], of Sutton, was very good. He said, “Don’t worry—no one will notice it with your beard. That is the only advantage of growing one that I can see.” There was no occasion for that remark, for Carrie is very proud of my beard.

To hide the absence of the tie I had to keep my chin down the rest of the evening, which caused a pain at the back of my neck.