CCW

Deb, you have been my favorite commenter all the time I've been playing the Crossword. I'll miss you. Best wishes for your future pursuits!

2/19/25 Back to the banks of the Pardon Alice River* An old Texan hippie with a peahen and a nene lived for a while in the Piney Woods but she suffered from apnea which she blamed on the trees until one day she happen(ed) to have an epiphany: There’s probably less pollen out west on the Pardon Alice! So the hippie cried “Yippee” and the birds said “Yeah” and they all moved to Stonewall and they’re still there today. Words from 2/18: epiphany, hippie, nene, peahen, piney *See Spelling Bee Forum of 1/24/24 for an earlier reference to the this river. Its real name is Pedernales, usually mispronounced by local anglophones as “per-duh-nal-es” and further corrupted by a TV caption writer as “Pardon Alice.” Neither that poem nor this one has anything to do with the real river. (Poem in the loose sense; “verses” might be a more accurate term. Or “doggerel,” but I’ve never liked that word. “Catterel”?) The river runs west of Austin. Stonewall is the site of the LBJ Ranch. The Piney Woods are in East Texas and adjacent states. The nene of course is Hawaiian; I have no idea how the Texas hippie aquired one.

HOW do you turn the dials?