mycalicocat

At times in my newspaper writing I really get the feeling I'm channeling my mother. I sat down, a while ago, to write a food page column and immediately thought of "Meet Mr. Meatball."
Mama was published a whole lot and was paid for her work, but she still loved getting money in the mail. Once she made up a couple of sheets of meatball recipes, entitled "Meet Mr. Meatball" and she photocopied this and sold this through little classified ads in women's magazines for several years. It cost $1 --meaning a dollar bill and the buyer had to include an SASE. She illustrated her typed-up recipes (which probably had plenty of xxx's, her standard correction method) with a little meatball man. Usually Mama twisted my arm into illustrating anything she wanted illustrated -- like the time she badgered me into drawing little okra-people climbing up a ladder and sliding down into a pot -- but she drew this one herself, sort of like a lumpy bumpy Wal-mart smiley face with stick legs and arms.
sPorcupine may remember Mr. Meatball. I can see it clearly and I also just turned her idea into a column with recipes (with due credit to the original author of course).
This also led me to the realization that for all practical purposes I am paid NOTHING for writing a food column on a Friday night, so her dollar bills look pretty good in retrospect.