Into whom should I run tonight but Jim Dees, host of Thacker Mountain Radio (you can see him in this video "link," eating side by side with me at the Ajax Diner). Dees - my hand to God! - brought up Jerry Lewis without prompting, of his own volition! I was shocked. Usually I'm the one who brings up Jerry, to general derision. But Dees reflected softly on his youth, when 25 cents and an RC Cola bottle cap would get you into the Paramount Theatre in Greenville, Mississippi, where Dees viewed several Jerry Lewis movies on the big screen. "It was like Imax," he recalled of the impression the screen made on his childish eyes. "There would always be a woman who hated Jerry through the whole movie then fell for him at the end. He was acting like this..." (Here Dees demonstrated some of Jerry's patented high jinks.) "What woman could fall for that?" Dees continued. "Even as an eight year old - an eight year old who liked Jerry Lewis - I knew it was wrong." Dees went on to relate the story of a friend of his, a woman whose name happened also to be a saucy double entendre, unprintable on the decorous "blog." She eventually became an on-air weather forecaster in Phoenix, Arizona. Jerry Lewis came by the station one day. Dees' friend sent him a picture of herself with Jerry Lewis in front of a weather map, at the exact moment she told Jerry her saucy name and Jerry doubled over with laughter. "It's funny you should mention Jerry," I said. "Just today I put up a picture of Dean and Jerry salt and pepper shakers on my 'blog.'" Dees frowned. "Now you've gone too far," he said. "Hardware."
