Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And the days of auld lang syne?
For auld lang syne, my dear
For auld lang syneWe'll drink a cup of kindness yet
For the sake of auld lang syne
And surely you will buy your cup
And surely I'll buy mine!We'll take a cup of kindness yet
For the sake of auld lang syne
We two have paddled in the stream
From morning sun till night
The seas between us Lord and swell
Since the days of auld lang syne
For old acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind
Should old acquaintance be forgot
For the sake of auld lang syne?
For old acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind
Should old acquaintance be forgot
In the days of auld lang syne?
For auld lang syne, my dear
For auld lang syne
We'll drink a cup of kindness yet
For the sake of auld lang syne
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Traditional
C.: Hey, d.c., what are you going to do today until the big games start? I know that you aren’t interested in watching all the other football games on today, just the two semifinals for the College Football Playoff Championship game.
d.: Well, I thought that I’d watch the movie of the year for 2023.
C.: Oppenheimer?
d.: No, I’ve seen that movie. I’m going to watch the movie “Barbie.” Then, I need to make my special New Year’s Day meal to bring me luck for the year.
C. What are you going to eat?
d.: Ham hocks, collard greens, black-eyed peas, and cornbread.
C.: That doesn’t sound like your usual meals. Why are you going to eat that?
d.: It’s traditional that Southerners on this planet in this country eat that meal to bring them luck for the new year. My grandfather insisted on eating that meal every New Year’s Day.
C.: Did it bring him luck?
d.: Well…he did get to go from riding in a covered, horse-drawn carriage to go to school in to seeing a man land on the moon in his lifetime. Of course…
C.: Of course, what?
d.: Well, my grandfather had ten other siblings, so he used the G.I. Bill to put himself through college. He was a veteran of “The Great War,” as he called it. Most of us call it World War I now, but my grandfather wasn’t aware that another World War happened about twenty years later.
C.: Why not, did he die before that happened?
d.: No. He had what some might call “shellshock” when he got older and was living with his five children. He stayed with my family the longest.
C.: Why? Didn’t he have his own place? And what makes you think he was shellshocked?
d.: I think he was shellshocked because he was afraid of airplanes. Every time one flew over, he told my brother, my sisters and me to “duck and cover.” He never used them for transportation, either, even though his son was a commercial airline pilot.
He did have his own place, though, until he fell off his harrow ( a piece of farm equipment) and couldn’t stop his mule. One of the teeth in the harrow took out one of his eyes. He later developed a cataract in his other eye. Back then, the surgery to remove them hadn’t been perfected, so the doctor didn’t take it out. That left him legally blind. Since he was then blind, he could no longer farm the small tract of land he bought when he got out of the army with a G.I. loan. The loan was called in, and he lost his land.
C.: Well, at least he had his health.
d.: Not exactly. My maternal grandfather lived to be eighty-six. In the 1970s, that was considered a long life. However, he lived through seven heart attacks. It was the eighth one that killed him. But he never had arthritis (as far as anyone knew, anyway. I’m not sure that he was lucid enough to know if he was in pain). I need to go now, Cal.E.
C.: Y?!
d.: I’m going to go buy a hamburger to eat. Celebrating a day selected at random to designate the beginning of the year is silly, anyway. It's not the beginning of a new season of the year, and it has nothing to do with the phases of the moon, like Chinese New Year does.
C.: So, I guess we’re out of time for today. Please join us tomorrow for another episode of Cal.E.’s Korner.
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