Open the Door, Bugs

Distinctly cool today, must have been in the mid-60s. Clouds and a little rain. That’s a Northern summer for you. Heat for a while, then a break for a few days, then more heat.

A collection of Looney Tunes cartoons came in the mail today, and it wasn’t long before the girls were watching it, and me sometimes too. Some of these we have on tape, others not. All of them featured Bugs Bunny. A few of them I hadn’t seen in many years, maybe never in color — and boy is the color fine on a DVD.

The gag in “High Diving Hare” is that Yosemite Sam repeatedly tries to force Bugs to do a high dive but each time falls himself. At one point, Bugs builds a locked door on the diving board between himself and Sam, who then bangs on it, saying something like “Open the door! Open the door!” Then, in an aside to the audience, he says, “You’ll notice I didn’t say ‘Richard.’ ”

I laughed out loud. I’ve probably seen this cartoon 20 times in my life, and only now did I get the joke. Last fall I heard “Open the Door, Richard” on a jazz show, and not long after that acquired a collection of novelty songs of the ’40s and ’50s that included it. That’s one good thing about getting older. Sometimes to details fall into place.