The 2021 Scallion: One for my baby and one more for the road

One more Scallion for you, my loyal readers:

2021 Scallion

(If you can't access it from the link above, just ping me in the comments, and I'll send you a PDF!)

Normally I include captions with the pictures in The Scallion, but honestly, that was just too much work for me this year, and some pictures needed a bit more than a caption anyway, so here is additional information about these pictures:

• Page 1, left: Vic loved fishing. He bought a fishing license every year, even though he long ago kinda gave it up (he started thinking the fish had feelings). But during the height of his love for fishing, virtually every gift he received had a fish on it, as evidenced by this picture. Vic is wearing a fish hat, a fish mug is affixed to his mouth, he is sporting a three-dimensional fish sweatshirt, he is holding a fish pitcher, and he is wearing fish socks. And then, over there on the left, is Murphy the cat, as if those fish are real!
• Page 1, center: Waggy loved squeaky toys from the pet store. She usually carried them around the house in her mouth, but she left this one on the couch, and Vic promptly put it on his head. I can't even count the number of “Vic put something on his head” pictures I had to wade through before I picked this one as my favorite.
• Page 1, right: For more than a year, Vic was told not to drive by his heart doctor. He hated it, but he hated the thought passing out and killing someone even more (he had a dark mind), so he stopped driving. This picture is from the first trip to Nebraska after he regained his driving privileges, so naturally, he had to ham it up.
• Page 2, Vic in the cone of shame: Here again, there were so many pictures of Vic wearing the cone of shame that it was tough to pick one. I chose the one for The Scallion because you can see his pouty face, but you can see my second favorite at the end of this post.
• Page 2, Vic with the horse: When we were members of the St. Vrain Photographic Society, we could often be seen taking pictures for a scavenger hunt. One year, one of the subjects was “horse,” and Vic saw this horse.We pulled over and he got his camera out, but that horse just came right over and gave him a big ol' peck on the cheek. He got so flustered he never even took a single shot! But I did.
  
• Page 2, Vic in the trunk: On our first trip to Hawaii, we left at the butt-crack of dawn. I was bringing the luggage out for Vic to put in the trunk, and this is what greeted me. The guy was just a class A goofball.
• Page 2, Vic with Wags: Let me say this one more time—the number of pictures I have of Vic with his sweatshirt pulled over his face would fill up a regular-sized photo album. But any picture with Wags in it is always going to rise to the top.

And then here are a couple of notes about the “obituary”:

• “I want people in tears, dammit!” Vic actually used this sentence on a number of occasions—whenever we would talk about his memorial service, whenever we wrote something for The Scallion about his health travails, every post on The Cancer Blog. It seemed totally fitting to include it in the last Scallion.
  
• Fletch was the first movie we ever saw, and we loved it. There was a scene with M. Emmet Walsh as a proctologist from whom Chevy Chase as Fletch was trying to get information. As he bluffs his way through the conversation, he gets caught in a lie about a man who died—the husband of a woman Fletch claimed was his aunt. That conversation went something like this:
• Doctor: It's a shame about Ed.
• Fletch: It was really a shame. To go so suddenly.
• Doctor: He was dying for years.
• Fletch: Sure, but the end was very, very sudden.
• Doctor: He was in intensive care for eight weeks.
• Fletch: Yeah, but I mean the very end, when he actually died, that was extremely sudden.
  
• So as I was thinking about The Scallion one day, this headline just came to me: “Beloved Scallion photo editor dies suddenly after years of declining health,” and that scene from Fletch came to mind right after. That's how I knew it was the right headline. 🙂
• The Underhills are also a big part of that movie. Here, Fletch goes to a tennis club to talk to the wife of the man who hired Fletch to kill him. He strolls right into the club and immediately overhears a man berating a member of the staff for trying to clear his plate too soon, and we learn that this man's last name is Underhill. He's a real a--hole to the staff member, so when another staff member notices Fletch loitering around and asks if he is a member, Fletch says, “No, I'm with the Underhills.” The waiter asks him if he wants anything to eat or drink and tells Fletch he will charge it to the Underhills. Fletch orders two portions of caviar, Lobster Thermidor and two bottles of Dom Perignon (a.k.a. Dom DeLuise in Sleepless in Seattle). When Mom was in hospice, Vic and I often shared meals with my sister, Laura, and her husband, Bill. I had Mom's credit card, so I would always say, “Let's charge this to the Underhills!” Then we just kept saying it, and it became one of those inside jokes married couples have that drive their friends mad.
  

And since I mentioned how many pictures I didn't include, here are a bunch that didn't make the cut. Normally I would create a new blog post for extra pictures, but again, that's just too much work for me this year 😉:

Fish socks close up!

Thank you again for your readership these last 15 years! Scallion out!