Why I oughta...

Favorite Lines From Favorite Movies

“Unchain the Jewess! She has found favor with Marcus Aurelius.” is one of them but not the one I’m fretting over right now. Right now I’m sitting on the porch of an exquisite June day with the creek chortling in the background, one mellow breeze, and myriad birds chirping from the trees, mostly maple, some wild cherry, around the house. Literally, there are flies in the ointment, large black ones, big as nickels, annoying as a robo call, noisy as your upstairs neighbor. Sometime back there was in infestation of lady bugs which had been brought in by the Department of Environmental Conservation to combat an infestation of something else. I forget what, some kind of moth, I think. The flies were brought in to get rid of the bugs then the flies proliferated and evolved to the coin sized creatures they are now. What can be brought in to combat the flies I do not know? Howitzers, maybe. The good thing about them is that they are very slow and therefore easy to smack with a swatter. Just a bit ago one lumbered by, and I literally snatched it. The old reflexes kicked in, and I got the damn thing. Muscle memory. Gotcha! Which brings me to my favorite lines from movies.

The Magnificent Seven.

Yul Brynner is hired by an impoverished Mexican village to protect them from marauding bandidos led by Eli Wallach. Yul scours the territory for the best gunfighters available and interviews each one for the job - guys like Charles Bronson, James Coburn, and Steve McQueen. He interviews Robert Vaughn at a table in a cantina. Vaughn is the slickest of the group, a fastidious dresser with black gloves. Three flies are crawling across the table. Vaughn stares at them for a second or two then his gun hand whips out and snatches them. Both men stare at his closed fist a minute then, ceremoniously, Vaughn opens it and releases two flies into the air. Two flies. Then Vaughn forlornly utters my line, “Was a time I’d’ve gotten all three.”

Now, everybody who knows me knows I’m a peaceable guy, nowhere near said gunfighters. But, I’m getting older. Hold on. I am older. Whoa. I am old. And there was a time - metaphorically speaking - when I might well have gotten all three.