3:21 news

Well, Kate did not make the top ten for Homecoming Court at PC. Kate has informed me that Claire and Alli will be in the top ten, but that we will cheer for Alli. Since her dad is providing a pre-game tailgate meal for us, I suppose we should oblige. I like little, cute redheads, anyway. Blondes and brunettes too. Since Kate has been all three, she is clearly at the top of my Homecoming list.

By the way, Kate does not seem too out of whack since she didn't get on the field at Homecoming. She does get a corsage to wear in the stands during the game. That is nice. A tad bit of consolation. Not that she apparently needs any consolation.

So apparently the answer to the loafer question is as follows: Back in the old days in Scandinavia, farmers wore a laceless slip-on shoe when they fed their cattle. Apparently, the area around where the cattle were fed was called a "loaf." So, the slip-on shoes they wore were referred to as "loafers." These were marketed in the U.S. to men as "loafers." So that's where the name came from. Its only later when they added the little slit on the top of the shoe where you could slip a penny and they became "penny loafers."

Cute little story. On December 30, 1982, my cousin Ed and I travelled from Atlanta to New Orleans to meet Cindy's family and attend the 1983 Sugar Bowl between those beloved Bulldogs and the Nittany Lions of Penn State. At the end of the Sugar Bowl festivities, the three of us hopped into my handy Chevy Monza (the sportiest compact car made by General Motors at the time, and my dad's biggest customer at the time and the source of my Chevy) and drove back to the ATL (which wasn't called that back then). Anyway, the next morning, we rode MARTA down to downtown Atlanta to look around. After walking around Mid-town for awhile, we were going to get back on MARTA and return to Dunwoody. Checking our collective pockets we found that we were about twenty cents short of the fare for the three of us. We were scrambling all over midtown trying to find a bank which would cash a check. Finally, we found one and returned to the MARTA station. As we entered the train and sat down, Cindy noticed that she had two dimes stuck in the slit on the top of her penny loafers. We laughed and laughed. At the time it was hilarious. I think my romantic ardor for the sweet young thing rendered it much more humorous at the time than it seems now. Nevertheless, a cute story, I suppose.

Interestingly, loafers have only been around since the 30's. I would have thought they were older than that. I don't know how long they have been putting pennies (or dimes) in the little slits on the tops.

Well, that's the news for this afternoon.