In 2004, The Denver Post featured an article in it’s Scene section that stopped me cold.

Leslie Limbo, contributing writer for the POST, wrote a wonderful article of a nine year old boy who WAS THERE WHEN IT HAPPENED IN PEARL HARBOR. I can no longer link you to the Denver Post’s Web page that had this article so I must transcribe it for you as follow:.

Sixty-three years later, he can still remember the sounds of aircraft on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941. Unlike many eyewitnesses to the Pearl Harbor attack, Colorado Springs resident Roy Warren wasn’t a sailor or a soldier on duty in Hawaii that fateful day. He was a 9-year-old boy looking out his bedroom window as history began unfolding before him.

“I could see the Japanese torpedo bombers about 15-20 feet above our house; they were flying toward the harbor and battleship row. I ran to my parent’s bedroom and yelled, ‘I think the Japanese are bombing us.’

Warren and his mother, Catherine, had joined his father Harold, a Navy ensign, on Hawaii in the summer of 1941. “It was common knowledge we were preparing for war,” Warren said. “But we thought the war would be fought in the Phillipines or somewhere closer to Japan.”

Even so, people were preparing. He recalled air raid drills in the months leading up to Dec. 7. During the drills, Marines in full battle dress would pick the children up from the Navy-run school about 100 yards from battleship row and take them to the administrative building, a concrete structure where they waited as the marines told the children to be quiet. “It was like a junior boot camp.

On Dec. 7, while the raid was going on, his father told the family to stay inside as he headed toward headquarters to work at the communications center at Pearl Harbor. But like most children, Warren got restless, so he and a buddy went exploring outside. “We found shrapnel and pieces of brass fuses that were still hot enough to burn our fingers,” Warren says. “We put the stuff we found in a coffee can.

Though his Navy housing area was not a target, houses were damaged in the attack as shrapnel fell on some of the roofs, including his. Bullets went all the way through a bedroom in the house across the street as some of the Japanese torpedo bombers must have started their straffing fire early.

Warren’s voice grew husky as he described the sailors in wet clothing who came up to the housing area after the attack looking for dry clothing and weapons. “They needed something to fight back with and didn’t have anything. I vowed then that I’d always have something to protect my family with. There are so many people who have never been up against anything like that.”

The Marines set up a machine gun nest next to the Warren house. A week later, when it became apparent Japan was not invading Hawaii, the sailors returned to Pearl Harbor. School was closed for nearly six months after the attack. Warren and his friends had plenty of time to go exploring.

“All the kids in the neighborhood scavenged for stuff. We found uniforms, bayonets, and other things. The Navy had gathered a lot of equipment and supplies that had been damaged and dumped it. There were complete wall lockers that had Christmas Cards inside in the dump. I didn’t read them; just saw them. Some of the weapons recovered from the ships were dumped because of the salt water or were covered in oil. I must have found a dozen rifles or more We played soldiers and sailors or cowboys and Indians with all the stuff. Nobody cared about what we had done or were doing with it.”

Warren and his family remained in Hawaii after the war. He received a degree in tropical agriculture from the University of Hawaii and later became a real estate broker. He also served in the US Army Reserves, retiring with the rank of major.

In the 1990’s he and his wife Patricia moved to Colorado Springs. In 1992 he and his mother received, on behalf of his father, a medal that the US Dept. of Defense awarded military members who survived the attack on Pearl Harbor. About ten years ago, Warren contacted the Admiral Nimitz State Historical Site National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredricksburg, Texas and arranged to donate his Pearl Harbor artifacts. He also made a recording of his memoires of the the day of the attack for the museum. <{>

Photographs of his father and the family form part of the exhibit. Warren’s memorabilia provides visitors with a different look at World War II, explains Mike Lebens, associate curator of the museum. “It allows them to look at war through a child’s eyes and brings home the reality of war to Americans who have never seen war on their own soil.”

While Warren's memorabilia of the Pearl Harbor attacks now rest in a Texas museum, Warren will always carry the memories of that terrible day on December 7, 1941.

-- Leslie Limbo, The Denver Post 12/7/04

We have a nice Fibber McGee and Molly Christmas program from 1942 for you in the middle of a over-baking summer to help cool you off. Click the link at the end of this article to start the program right now, then you can read the rest of Norm's Ramblins while you listen... or finishing those emails you intended to get out yesterday.

Fibber McGee and Molly, one of the most popular radio programs of all time, first premiered in 1935, but its origins can be traced farther back into the lives of the show’s two lead actors. The program was the creation of the husband and wife comedy team of Jim and Marian Jordan. The singing and comedy duo hailed from Peoria, Illinois, where the two grew up, met, and married in 1918.

From an early age both had dreams of a life in entertainment, but before becoming one of America’s best known celebrity couples the two would spend decades paying their “showbiz dues” -with seven years fruitless effort traveling the vaudeville circuit and another ten singing and acting in numerous small-time radio shows in the Chicago area.

It was in Chicago in 1929 that the pair became friends with a Don Quinn, who began writing an occasional joke or humor sketch for the Jordans to use in their act on The Farmer Rusk Hour. The material that Quinn wrote was superior to anything the “Farmer Rusk” writers were producing, and thus began a partnership between the three that would carry them to fame and fortune on Fibber McGee and Molly.

In the early 1930’s the trio from Farmer Rusk to a comedy show of their own creation called Smackout, named after a well stocked country store which somehow was “smack out” of anything you wished to buy. It was on this program that many character ideas were created which would be continued on Fibber McGee and Molly. At the time, the Jordans also remained active on many other radio shows including various musical dramas, quiz shows, variety shows, other comedies, and children’s programs.

When Fibber McGee and Molly began in 1935 under sponsorship of Johnson Wax, the program was a simple continuation of the vaudeville style format that the duo had practiced for years. The pair were cast as traveling vagabonds who stopped in to towns along “route 42” for gas and conversation. Fibber was the happily inept braggart whose vivid imagination leads him to telling the most outlandish stories about himself. Molly was cast as his constant companion and severest critic, whose shrill “McGee!” would bring him back to earth in an instant.

In the next several months Quinn’s scriptwriting began to really excel, which was reflected in turn by the Jordans’ seamless performances and impeccable comedic timing. The show’s character also began taking on more of a connected storyline rather than a series of distended vaudeville skits.

The McGees moved into a home in the town of “Wistful Vista” where the show now revolved around Fibber bungling his chores around the house, or his various occupations at the public library, post office, and antique store. Molly became more of a sympathetic, tolerant, easy-going character and audiences responded immediately to the changes. In 1940 it became the top show in the nation and throughout the 1940’s remained a tight contender for the honor with Bob Hope, Jack Benny, and Edgar Bergen.

Throughout the run of the show a whole series of guest characters came and went. Among these included Fibber’s feuding neighbor Gildersleeves, who went on to be the star character in the spin-off The Great Gildersleeves. It was Gildersleeves who had the patent line “You’re a haaaa-hard man, McGee!” Other famous lines from the show came from Fibber’s wife Molly including “T’aint funny McGee!” and “Heavenly Days!” Also on the show was the ever-timid Wallace Whimple, who was terrified of his wife, the ferocious, often discussed, but never present “Sweetie Face.” Fibber gave Wallace the nickname “wimp” –and thus coined the meaning for the word to this day.

Perhaps the most well remembered “character” from the show was Fibber McGee’s cluttered closet. Whenever Fibber, or someone else, made the mistake of opening the closed door, a tremendous mountain of junk would come crashing down. The closet was the work of sound effects engineers who would assemble the assorted closet pieces (which sometimes included golf clubs, guitars, pith helmets, roller skates, a sword, a spear-gun, shoes, a suitcase and a broken clock) perching them precariously atop a short stairway during the half-hour live broadcasts until it was time for the closet to “open.”

On the 128 occasions the closet gag was used, not once did the props tumble down off cue. Fibber McGee and Molly is still quite popular among old time radio fans to this day, with over 700 episodes still existing in their entirety. After the death of Jim Jordan in 1988, members of his family donated the bound volumes of Fibber McGee and Molly scripts to the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago, where there is also a “Fibber McGee’s Closet” exhibit. –CP

For today’s featured Sound From the Past we’ve selected a Christmas episode which first aired on December 15th 1942.

At one time, let's say 40 years ago, you could only find a Claxton Fruitcake in Georgia. Today, you can find them in your supermarket... almost anywhere. The "Claxtons" are delicious, mainly because they are jammed full of Georgia pecans. If you can't find one and want to taste one, let me know. Chris writes about another really good fruit cake -- the Collin Street Bakery premium fruitcake that has been made in Corsicana, Texas since 1989. I just came across a nostalia website that listed the tim for a Collin Street Bakery fruitcake -- they wanted $15.00 for the empty 15 year old tin. Remember that when you purchase one.

Last year the FAA made a decision to not permit the "Carry-On" of any fruitcake. It seems like the density of the product resembles gunpowder. Is that why most fruitcakes are stored? Now there's something to think about and pass on as one of your Christmas reality jokes. Now here's Chris Plunkett's classic essay on Fruitcake. Chris is now the Hydrologist for the Flaming Gorge Reservoir and the Unita Wilderness of Northeast Utah.

Ah yes, ‘tis the season for yet another holiday tradition! Just like good ole Saint Nick himself it’s time for that long-lived and oft-maligned gastronomic wonder, the noble fruitcake, to rise from it’s darkened celestial cupboard and set out on its holiday “gift given” rounds, spreading joy and good cheer the wide world over.

And to serve as a yuletide warning for all the headstrong and precocious children of the planet to behave themselves, ere the firm hands of justice should force them in punishment to actually eat a piece!

As far back as the gilded Christmas age of Charles Dickens’ England, the fruitcake has suffered the “slings and arrows of outrageous” culinary reviews. It was Dickens himself who once referred to it as “a geological homemade cake,” but it was under Johnny Carson’s watch on "The Tonight Show" that fruitcakedom witnessed its public relations low-point with a series of “vicious and slanderous” chucklers, the best of which was… “There’s only one fruitcake in the entire U.S. and it’s passed around year after year, from family to family!”

Not laughing? Well I suppose we lack Ed McMahon’s “Ho-Ho’ing” shotgun-backup for the full “Carson effect.”

There are a few among fruitcake’s myriad fans (and those who just pretend to be for “image’s sake”) that trace its beginnings back to Egyptian times when cakes of dried fruit (in a tasteful dusting of natron) were prepared for the Pharaoh to take with him into the afterlife.

Still others cite the first fruitcakes occurring in Roman times, when a sumptuous mélange of raisins, pine nuts, and pomegranate were set in a barley mash and baked to produce a dense, durable food stuff that could easily travel on long campaigns with the conquering legions.

During the Middle Ages in Europe honey became an essential ingredient of the cakes, as a flavoring and a preservative. With the advent of cheap sugar, brought by the colonial trade of the 1600’s, fruitcake’s shelf-life steadily increased as the nuts and fruity bits were soaked in greater and greater concentrations of sugar.

By the 1700’s these cakes were used in various religious festivals, harvest celebrations, and weddings. In rural communities the harvest was marked by the baking of special cakes, which were stored until the following year to bring luck to the New Year’s crop. Along a similar vein, in some parts of England the upper layer of wedding cakes (the bride’s cake) is still made of fruitcake, which the newly wed couple keeps for the coming year(s).

No one seems to be certain why fruitcakes became associated with Christmas time, but one imaginative story involves a late 1700’s English custom of handing out slices of cake to impoverished women who traveled door to door at Christmas, singing carols. Another possibility involves another English law from the 1700’s, which restricts the use of plum cake (i.e. fruitcake) to Christmas, Easter, weddings, christenings and funerals. In any case most fruitcakes are eaten (or I should say, “sold”) at holiday time.

Here in America, the modern Christmas fruitcake comes in two basic varieties, typically formed into a dense ring-shaped loaf, often topped in pecans. One variety is the “light fruitcake;” this uses sugar or corn syrup and a mixture of walnuts, almonds, pecans, golden raisins, pineapple, lemon rind, apricot, and cherry, bound in a sweet heavy dough.

"Dark fruitcakes" employ brown sugar or molasses as the main sweetener, and often use additional fruits such as dark raisins, prunes, and dates. Both varieties are often available with bourbon, brandy, or some other eau de vie as an added flavoring.

Despite all the jokes and their bad image, fruitcakes can be big business. The two largest fruitcake companies hail from the rural South, where traditionally fruit and nutmeats were available at bargain prices. The top-selling fruitcake company is the Claxton Bakery out of Claxton, Georgia -- you've seen it with it's two inch square loaf that is about eight inches long and chucked full of Georgia pecans. The rival to Claxton is the Collin Street Bakery in Corsicana, Texas. The Claxton Bakery does not readily disclose exactly how many of their unusual brick shaped “beauties” are foisted upon humanity each year, but in one article they mention that a single government commissary once placed an order for 65,000 cakes. Oddly enough, a surprisingly large portion of all fruitcakes produced go to Japan!

For those brave few souls who feel inspired to actually do some fruitcake nibbling this holiday season, I can offer but a scant few tips. Sadly –perhaps I mean “happily”- my experience has been limited to only a few mass-produced examples of the fruitcake baker’s art. I suppose I should also warn you that my opinion is further handicapped by a hatred of maraschino cherries!

Most of the fruitcakes I’ve eaten have struck me as quite dry and bland, but find that the Claxton fruitcakes (while still bland compared to fruit breads like German stollen, Italian panetone, and French kougelhof) …the Claxton cakes have a wet dense texture that I find a bit more palatable than other options I’ve sampled -including the fruit-flavored CLIF and Powerbars that mountainbikers and "outdoorsy types" so often rave about. I've never had a Collin Street fruitcake, but know those who swear by them. (Or was it "at them?") I hear that the dark variety of fruitcake has a bolder flavor and that all of them are much improved if they’ve been baked with a little bourbon or some other liqueur.

Fruitcakes also improve with time; a good three months are required for the flavors from the fruits to fully blend and meld into the sweet doughy binder. Carefully stored, a fruitcake can last for years! The first thing to "go" on them will be the nuts.

Though I’ve never tried them, I hear that Trappist monks can make some pretty good fruitcakes! Two “orders” renowned for their bourbon-laced cakes are the Abbey of Gethsemane near Louisville, Kentucky (www.monks.org) and the Holy Cross Abbey in Berryville, Virginia. (www.monasteryfruitcake.org).

For those curious to have a look at the operations of the top-producing Claxton Bakery their web address is www.claxtonfruitcake.com. And in the interest of granting equal billing for our "Texas friends" the Collin Street Bakery's site is www.collinstreetbakery.com.

Norman Plunkett

God is good -- ALWAYS!

And especially as He floods you with all the grace you need no matter what the situation. As you trust Him, God's grace is always just enough and always on time.