In Captain America: Civil War, there’s a moment when Cap, Falcon, and Bucky are escaping from prison. They’re in a Volkswagen bug (I guess to blend in, since they’re in Germany), and at one point Cap — who is driving — gets out to receive their weapons and equipment from Agent Carter, who is helping them escape. As Falcon and Bucky watch, Bucky, who’s sitting in the back, says to Falcon, “Can you move your seat up?”
Falcon says simply, “No.”
This expresses a lot about how he feels about the situation they’re in, but it also reminded me of something.
In an episode of a classic radio comedy show Vic ‘n Sade, from the 1930s and 1940s, Vic has come home from his job at the kitchenware plant (to the “small house halfway up in the next block”) for lunch.
Instead of finding lunch on the table, he finds Sade (his wife) and Rush (their son) sitting on the back steps. Lunch isn’t ready, because Sade is making beef punkles, and, as she reminds him, beef punkles take four full hours to get tender.
The three of them chat about other things, with Vic periodically coming back to the fact that lunch still isn’t ready, and Sade reminding him again about how long it takes for beef punkles to get tender.
Finally, he asks if Sade could have started the beef punkles earlier.
“No,” Sade serenely replies.
Falcon’s “No” reminds me of Sade’s, but who is possibly going to understand that now?
It’s amazing how little things in stories remind us so much of other stories and moments. 🙂
I’m not sure if this helps make up for making you feel old the other week, but my friends and I were very much into radio theater when we were kids. Not Vic ‘n Sade, but there was a series called Adventures in Odyssey that we all would spend hours listening to.
I really like audio drama. Both old-time radio (my phone is full of old radio detective and adventure shows) and modern (there’s a company in England that does Dark Shadows on audio, with many of the original cast members, and some of them are really good).
I should mention though (just in case there’s any question) that Vic ‘n Sade went off the air before I was born (not that old 🙂 ). I used to hear about it from my parents, and some of their common phrases in conversation came from the show (when my father was vexed with me, he would tell me to “Go down cellar!” which used to confuse me because we didn’t have a cellar — I found out later that Vic used to say it to Rush).
But then I found that some episodes had survived, and my mother and I listened to them sometimes, as she had listened to them with her mother, who I never met.