Frazz by Jef Mallett for April 22, 2021

Even the Miss Olsen liked a bad boy.

Kids really don’t think of teachers as being ordinary people with ordinary behaviors outside of their job. And for that matter, “teacher” isn’t probably a “job” to them unless a parent is one. And to be fair, I’d not thought of her as being still  married to Mr. Olsen. Maybe it’s the glasses…

Interesting. My first car was a 1967 Chevelle four door sedan with the small block V-8. $500.00 in 1977.

Caulfield isn’t usually that slow on the uptake.

Actually, there doesn’t necessarily have to still be a Mr. Olsen at home – she could be a widow who still has her husband’s car in the garage. Or they were divorced and she got the car in the settlement?

My first car was a ‘69 Impala with three on the tree which I didn’t choose but hey, was happy to have a car. Right now, there’s a Mustang for me and a ‘69 Chevelle for hubs that he’s trying to get an Enderle to work on. For the street. He’ll manage. He always does :)

’71 Chevelle with a 454 “porcupine” motor……

Is Mrs. Olsen from Pasadena?

I have no idea why I thought she was solo?

Aww, i hope he’s a retired Mr. rather than an expired Mr.

Isn’t a Chevelle like the most boring car ever? Or am I ignorant of muscle car culture?

Every Friday night the Olsens and the Chevvy visit the local drive-in hamburger stand.

Well, here’s a surprise to nobody … the car, not the Mr.

Yet to put salt on old sores … and knowing nothing of WI … we just killed six people this morning and yesterday on “black ice” laid down IN APRIL along with 4-6 inches of snow. I’m 600 miles south of that lovely state and still have a recently used brush in my car.

A Chevelle was never a muscle car. Calling a Chevelle a muscle car is like calling a Pinto a muscle car.

I was a little slow on the uptake, too. Mrs. Olsen’s life appeared to be a single person, given how much we’ve seen her outside of school and in her home

Don’t think the Chevelle was a muscle car. Now my 1969 Falcon ….

Teaching in a small rural community has its funny moments. I’m in a local grocery, picking over the lettuce, and a very serious mom comes up and says, _How’s my child doing. Mr. ___?_ Notice she gave no name.

Well, first, I notice that several pairs of ears are tuned in to our conversation.

And second, I have never seen the lady before, so I’m fumbling for an answer that won’t show that I have no clue who my child is. Desperate to avoid getting the gender wrong, I replied —

Well, very well so far, I don’t see any reason to worry. Of course, the exam will be harder, but with enough time on the books, that shouldn’t be a problem.

She seemed to accept that and I went off down the aisle, lettuce in hand, right to the check-out counter. I wasn’t taking a chance that one of the other parents would want to ask that same question. I mean, a parent-conference in the produce aisle? And while I didn’t quite lay rubber, I did move rather briskly out of the parking lot.

From then on, I shopped about 10 miles farther down the road.

She looks like "Betty Read’ without Read’s potato salad demeanor,

Sometimes people are cooler than other people know. I, for instance, am cool. But nobody knows it.

The reason Caulfield does not know about the Chevelle? Obviously Mr. Olsen never lets her drive it. Probably because of how she crunches up her Buick all the time.

Try telling someone in the know that a 1971 LS-6 Chevelle isn’t a muscle car.

Her husband built the Chevelle as a Funny Car and maintained it. She was just the driver.

…a bit off the muscle car theme, but those pre-1955 cars converted into lowriders are fetching a mint these days outside the US.

I laughed out loud — quite literally — at that one.

Jef Mallett’s Blog

Frazz 16h · There’s one mystery solved. Maybe even two or three. I’ve never owned a muscle car, nor to my knowledge ever had my name painted on a car. Closest I’ve come to naming a car was my first one, a rusted-out, anemic and not at all super Volkswagen Super Beetle. I made and applied a sticker that said “Vector,” because the word inexplicably but viscerally — and in that case laughably dishonestly — evokes speed, when a vector is also, more accurately in that car’s case, a scientific word for a disease-carrying bug.

454 with a Turbo 400 auto trans.

She’s not drawn with a ring.