TRACKING HAPPINESS: Chapter 9

This is CHAPTER 9 in our series offering gossip, novel backstory, and personal confessions about TRACKING HAPPINESS: A SOUTHERN CHICKEN ADVENTURE. We’re working our way through a novel here. If you’re just now discovering us, you can jump in now or go back to the first entry and catch up. If you jump in now, I can’t promise you it won’t be confusing, but it might be interesting too.

Ok. Last we left off: Lucinda and Augie had actually de-boarded the train. Earlier, I promised you wouldn’t get claustrophobic reading the novel because they would get off the train and have adventures. Now you know I don’t lie. 

One more word of advice: in this chapter, Lucinda wears a jacket she bought in the teen department at Target. I have occasionally thought, given how small I am, I could wear clothes from the children’s department. Why would I want to do that? They’re cheaper. But what I consistently found was that shirts from the teen department are too small under the arms. It’s not that I’m too big around; my trunk is too long. So the armholes just about strangle my arm pits. In other words, don’t try this at home. It’s not safe.

Referenced in this chapter is a very famous Milwaukee beer joke. My cousin told me this joke when I was a teenager because he liked puns and so did I. I researched to confirm it is a real joke (it is).  I then spent an inordinate amount of time reading the other jokes on the website. I’m including the url to the site in the footnotes below, but it’s not my advice you go visit it. You will waste precious moments of your life that you will never get back.

I have also included in the footnotes some information on Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which the characters talk about in this chapter. This is one of my favorite movies, and it is a TERRIBLE movie. The plot is fixated on drunken cocktail parties. The movie features a terrible racist stereotype by the worst actor of all times—Mickey Rooney. The heroine, Holly Golightly, is a 100% gold-digger trying to catch a rich man and, in pursuit of this goal, keeps hooking up with older, unattractive men. The movie features Jed Clampett in a serious role, child marriage, and, worst of all, it takes Holly the ENTIRE FILM to notice how gorgeous George Peppard is. It won 2 Oscars. It features Henry Mancini’s “Moon River,” which is my mother’s favorite song. I named my dog Lucy Gardenia after Holly’s mob connection, Sally Tomato. I own a rhinestone necklace and earrings EXACTLY like Holly’s necklace and earrings. I would kill to look like Audrey Hepburn. The movie is a comedy. 

Okay, I think that’s enough preliminary information. 

Fun Chicken Fact: Chickens will eat lizards. They’ll eat mice. They will eat tin foil. They’re what’s called omnivores. They will eat anything, though I haven’t put this statement to a scientific test, particularly the tin foil part. 

Now go read Chapter 9 of TRACKING HAPPINESS: A SOUTHERN CHICKEN ADVENTURE

NOTES SECTION for Chapter 9

Milt Famey joke http://research.udmercy.edu/find/special_collections/digital/cfa/index.php?term=6677.1&field=boggsNum&start=80

Breakfast at Tiffany’s
https://www.vogue.com/article/audrey-hepburn-birthday-breakfast-at-tiffanys