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| The Rotunda Fire, University of Virginia, 1895. |
Later, I realized that the mission had to end in a let-down because the real barrier wasn't in the sky but in our knowledge and experience of supersonic flight. -Gen. Charles Elwood "Chuck" Yeager, Myra, West Virginia
Sunday
SMOKE, SMOKE, SMOKE (That Cigarette) ~ Phil Harris & his Orchestra 1947
A real toe-tapper featuring The Sportsman (cough) from the incomparable Phil Harris, Indiana born and Nashville raised. Phil was best known as the Southern hipster musical director for The Jack Benny Program. "Hiya, Jackson!" and later as a favorite voice in a number of Disney's animated films, notably "Baloo" in The Jungle Book.
Smoke Smoke Smoke (Merle Travis, Kentucky)
Now I'm a feller with a heart of gold
And the ways of a gentleman I've been told
The kind of guy that wouldn't even harm a flea
But if me and a certain character met
The guy that invented the cigarette
I'd murder that son-of-a-gun in the first degree
It ain't cuz I don't smoke myself
And I don't reckon that it'll harm your health
Smoked all my life and I ain't dead yet
But nicotine slaves are all the same
At a pettin' party or a poker game
Everything gotta stop while they have a cigarette
Smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette
Puff, puff, puff and if you smoke yourself to death
Tell St. Peter at the Golden Gate
That you hate to make him wait
But you just gotta have another cigarette
Into the Bonnie Blue- Twelve O'Clock High
can be watched in its entirety on YouTube.
At the 1:01:02 mark, B-17 Bomber pilot Birdwell, exhausted after completing a series of highly dangerous practice
runs in formation flying over the English countryside, has a few choice Southern words about General Savage.
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| That's Birdwell on the right. |
" 'Close it up, close it up, closer! Shove that there wingtip right in his lap...'Sweet Savannah! That wing tip o' Baxter's has been tickling me right in the ribs for three days now, man, I'm gettin' mighty tired of it!"
"That's tellin' em Birdy!"
"Yeah an' another thing I noticed... for folks that talks a lot about other people's ability as a pilot that there General seems mighty willing not to do any of it hizself.
Hmmmph! Looks like we just got ourselves a talkin' General!"
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