A Little Bit of Wisconsin in Oz

As coroner, I must aver

I thoroughly examined her

And she's not only merely dead

She's really, most sincerely dead!

You know when you reach a certain age and there's no one to help locate your walker or find the pills necessary to make you pee straight (any bowl in the storm will do), and sleep is nigh impossible because the bedroom has been misplaced, a 2 AM viewing of "The Wizard of Oz" sets everything straight. Well mostly everything.

And when it comes time for the Munchkin coroner to warble the above Arlen-Harburg verse, I press pause and croak out On Wisconsin before resuming play; for as everyone knows, Meinhardt Raabe '37 is a University of Wisconsin alumnus.

As of this writing, Meinhardt is still with us at the age of 93, his longevity, no doubt, due to all the Oscar Mayer wieners he consumed while serving as the company's Little Oscar spokesperson for several decades.