ABC Wednesday Challenge - Q

It's ABC Wednesday again, and this week, the letter is

I was in a Quandary, unsure what to write about this week.

Iknow there are very few herbs that start with Q, not many of my favorite foods, and I don't even think I have a "Q" tie, unless I count my duck tie. QUACK, QUACK.

A QUERY for Q words turned up the usual QUOTA of words, but none that really grabbed my eye.

As I continued my QUEST, Diann reminded me about another QUEST we had, for a word that starts with Q. So I want to tell you all a story.

Years ago, I drove a truck, long haul over the road, all across the USA and Canada. When Diann and I got married, she would often go with me, to keep me company, help me pass the time of day, and actually be able to spend some time together like married people sometimes do.

There are lots and lots of interesting things to see out there on the highway.


But lets face it, there are also miles and miles of absolutely nothing.


So, Diann and I would make up games to keep ourselves from going crazy. I have always had a weird memory for song lyrics. I may not be able to remember my neighbors name, but I can remember a song that I heard back in 1972.

So a lot of our made up games were based on song lyrics.

QUAINT AND QUIRKY, I know, but QUITE effective at helping to pass the time on QUIET stretches of highway, especially in the wee hours of the morning.

Trucking is an odd job. Often you will sit for three days waiting for a load, then at 10:00 at night they dispatch you on a load that has been sitting in the drop yard a mile away since last Thursday and has to be delivered at a warehouse 400 miles away at 8:00 the next morning. The worst part is, they do it on purpose. They don't want you to get there too early and be parked on the street waiting, so they wait until the last minute to give you the load. It's call Just In Time freight, (JIT) and in my opinion it is one of the most dangerous practices in the trucking industry today, but that's a different rant for another day.

Anyway, on one such night, we found ourselves with a load that was going to require me to drive most of the night. Diann loyally stayed awake with me on these kind of nights, to help me stay awake.

So, we started to play a song game. This one was based on the alphabet.

The first person was to sing a line from a song that contained a place that started with "A". Then the other person would sing a line with a place that started with "B". We worked our way right through the alphabet, kind of like ABC Wednesday, when you come to think of it.

I started. A was easy.

"Amarillo by Morning"

Diann countered with:

"It happens out in Vegas happens in Moline
On the blue blood streets of Boston
Up in Berkeley and out in Queens."

(A double whammy right off the bat. She is a tough competitor, even when there is no competition.)

I followed up with:
"Hey boys, is that the Chatanooga Cho-Choo?"

And she immediately answered that one with:

"Everybody's gonna move their feet
Everybody's gonna leave their seat
You gonna lose your mind in Detroit Rock City"

That's how these kind of games usually went. I relied real heavily on classic country, with a bit of oldies rock thrown in, and Diann relied real heavily on classic rock, with a little bit of everything else thrown in. She has more eclectic taste in music than I do.

Well, we were going along just fine, passing the time and watching the mile markers slip by, until we got to "Q". Of course, it was my turn, and I thought long and hard about it, but just couldn't come up with anything. So, I tried to pass. We had no rule about passing, but since we made up the rules ourselves as we went along, we QUICKLY added one. Then Diann tried to come up with a line. She didn't have any more luck than I did.

We pondered, we ciphered, we were baffled.

We could think of places that started with Q, and songs with Q-words in them, but o song with a place that starts with Q.

Finally, we gave up and moved on.

The next morning, we called Dianns' Dad, possibly the one person in the world who knows more obscure songs that I do. He was stumped too.

We were QUASHED. QUENCHED. QUELLED, by a single letter.

We were able to come up with the other 25, but never did find a Q.

To this day, we still haven't come up with one.

Can you?

So, today's post about Q is a reminder That it isn't the QUANTITY of time you spend together, but the QUALITY, that really counts.




Please take some time to check out what others were INSPIRED to blog about this week, at

ABC Wednesday,
and feel free to add your own blog to the list as we work our way through the alphabet.

~{@ @}~ ~{@ @}~ ~{@ @}~ ~{@ @}~ Be sure and join me each Tuesday for Tuesday Trivia Tie-in, where readers are invited to share trivia and show off their treasures. Read all about it here