Ollie Hopnoodle's Haven of Bliss (1988 TV Movie)

Jean Shepherd: Ralph the Man, Scott

Photos 

Quotes 

• Ralph the Man : We are a nomadic people. It was Americans who created the mobile home, not Yugoslavians or Belgians, Americans. Travel to an American is what eating strudel is to a German. We are simply reaffirming our national heritage.

• Ralph the Man : [about the melted chocolate bar in the glove compartment]  This became one of the family's great unsolved mysteries. Nobody admitted it. It couldn't have been Randy; he would have instantly eaten the chocolate bar. My mother did not approve of candy in any form. I know I didn't do it. Who did? Was it the Old Man himself? The story never came out, and neither did the chocolate. From that day on, we had a chocolate lined glove compartment, with nuts.

• Ralph the Man : [as Mom prepares meatloaf]  Can't you just smell that meatloaf? Yeah, she set the standard for the whole state. She was to meatloaf what Ted Williams was to longball hitting. Mom was a slugger.

• Ralph the Man : Life in a mill town is getting out of school as quickly as possible and getting a job, joining all the other suckers on life's treadmill.

• Ralph the Man : Vacation. Huh, hooray! Fifty weeks of drudgery that the Old Man was ready to break the chains. Every year he swore that he'd get out on the road before dawn to miss the traffic. Every year, he lost the battle.

• Old Man : When I was 14, I had two jobs I've been working for ten years.

  Ralph the Man : All fathers since the beginning of time have believed that kids have it easier than they did when they were a kid. Generation after generation, my old man was in the great tradition.

• Ralph the Man : That night, I hurt all over. It was like every inch of me had been pounded by small sledgehammers driven by imps. One day on the job and already I hated it more than going to the dentist.

• Mr. Scott : You gentlemen ready to work?

  Ralph , Flick , Schwartz : Yes, sir.

  Mr. Scott : You ready to throw your shoulders against that wheel?

  Ralph , Flick , Schwartz : Yes, sir.

  Mr. Scott : We'll find out.

• Ralph the Man : At the crack of dawn, we were back in hell. I had slept 14 hours and I was still tired. I could feel myself getting older by the minute. The whole day stretched ahead of us like the Sahara Desert, slaving under the burning sun.

• Mr. Scott : Men, I just got a call from Heine. You know what Heine said? He said it just hasn't worked out.

  Schwartz : But why?

  Mr. Scott : You just haven't worked hard enough. You haven't put your shoulders to the wheel. I'm sorry. You can pick up your salaries from Mrs. Whipple.

  Schwartz : But...

  Mr. Scott : Oh, by the way, we're gonna deduct $2 a piece for them work gloves, and don't forget to turn them in when you leave. That's all.

  Ralph the Man : Fired! The ax had fallen.

  Mr. Scott : Good luck, men.

  Ralph the Man : Good luck? Good luck? The great front office chopper had lobbed off our heads just like that. How many millions of times has this happened to innocent workers all over the world? Bam, and you're dead.

• Ralph the Man : About this time, he was beginning to entertain thoughts of murder.

• Ralph the Man : [after the Parkers' car was pelted with chicken feathers, eggs, and feces from being stuck behind a chicken truck]  You know, I later realized that the Old Man saw much of life as an extension of this curious insult. He often described it in those exact terms. He even used the word "chicken".

• Old Man : Ollie, how are they biting?

  Ollie : Well, they was ettin' real good last week, they was bitin' anything you threw at them. Then just yesterday afternoon, they stopped. Never seen it so slow.

  Old Man : [sadly]  Yeah, well, I guess that's just the way it goes. Thanks, Ollie.

  Ralph the Man : Every fisherman in the world knows how they were biting last week, when those other mysterious fishermen were around. You know those guys, they're always there when the action is hot and heavy, they know when it's gonna happen. Oh well, we were at the lake, and who knows, they might start biting again, just might.

• Ralph the Man : There are no vacations like the ones of your youth. When everything was new, the smell of the cabin, the sound of the rain on the roof, the family asleep all around you. Thank God for Ollie Hopnoodle's Haven of Bliss.

• Mr. Scott : [having just hired Ralph, Flick, and Schwartz]  Heine, I'm sending three more down.

• Ralph the Man : Mr. Scott. He looked like a cross between Rasputin and the Wolf Man, but he couldn't have. It must be my imagination. It's the way I see him now. He probably was just an ordinary looking guy.

• Ralph the Man : Hooked rugs, ashtrays from Niagara Falls, plastic birds, ornaments, glass balls on concrete stands. Every year there must be 70 million tons of roadside junk bought by migrating Americans. No one has as yet fully explained the urge that large numbers of people have to dot their lawn with plastic flamingos, or elves squatting under toadstools. When he's at home and in his right mind, he would never think of buying a pink, plastic duck, but when he's on the road, somehow it makes sense.

• Ralph the Man : It is my belief that most purchases of this sort of lawn slob art are instigated by women. I've rarely met a man who has an uncontrollable urge to buy a Dutch windmill.

• Ralph the Man : [when the family is lost taking a detour]  Ancient legends of the sea, as any every old salt will tell you, say that when lost on the deep, the victim is doomed to sail in circles forever, forever and forever, searching for a landmark. Beset on all sides by strange creatures, evil monsters, the lost Mariner searches and searches in the Sargasso Sea of life.

• Ralph the Man : And so in the great tradition of the tourist, our family acquired a Dutch windmill for the lawn. The year after, we got two flamingos. And then the year the Old Man got his raise, we finally got that beautiful white plastic donkey. Oh, the urge to add beauty to one's life is irresistable.

• Ralph the Man : The crucial moment that a fan of slob art makes a decision to buy and actually pay for a concrete toad or a gold mirror ball, ha ha and they don't come cheap either, is a moment where he is making an important, artistic decision. That gold mirror ball, that toad could become a family heirloom passed down from one suffering generation to the next.