No good turn goes unpunished. Joe Wilding was headed south on Bayard last month in a JC Wilding pick-up truck when he came upon a giant, shifting mound of mattress foam fanned out across the intersection at Felspar. He pulled over and began the arduous task of trying to clean up the mess. He got most of it in the truck and covered it with a tarp, but not before someone – apparently thinking he’d made the mess – drove by and gave him the stink-eye. My late neighbor Emily Packer has gone to her great reward, but her legacy lives on. Always a free spirit, Emily let her lawn do its own thing. By mid-summer the weeds had usually muscled the grass out of the way, and it often looked like a wheat field. Emily had no heirs and the home is apparently in a trust. The weeds didn’t care. They’re back bigger than ever. I went down to CVS last week to get me a box of Q-tips. I grew up using them to keep my ears clean. The box lists a “variety of uses,” but ear cleaning isn’t one of them. Baby care – delicately care for sensitive areas. First aid – gently apply ointments and creams. Household use – for all household cleaning. Electronics – clean and dust even hard-to-reach areas. I have an ugly feeling that someone must have misused a Q-tip in the past and ear cleaning is now verboten. Speaking of CVS, do you remember what it used to be? Of course you do – it was Longs only a few weeks ago. How about before that? Remember Liquor Barn? And before that, what it was actually built for? I’ll put the answer at the bottom of the column. I’m thinking of taking up drinking liquor. It can’t be much more expensive than what I’ve been drinking!! A Pepsi cost me $2.55 at El Torito in Mission Valley a while back. Then I got dinged $2.99 for a cup of coffee at Karl Strauss in La Jolla. Guess I better start hanging around the new Cass Street Café in Bird Rock. Their coffee is A BUCK!!! Bumper Snicker: I sure got a kick out of “I used to have a handle on life but it broke.” (Big Bear Market) John Fry may be reached at 272-6655 or [email protected].