I’m taking a little break, and giving you one too, by featuring Vicki Lawrence this week, because her bio is pretty brief and straightforward, as is her recipe. I will encourage you, though, to check out her website, which resembles nothing moreso than a GeoCities page circa 1998. Thank you, Ms. Lawrence, for the reminder of the days when the information superhighway seemed so full of promise, and before it became the never-ending trip through the horror house at the Scooby Doo failed amusement park that it is today.

http://www.vickilawrence.com/Recipes2013.html

Vicki grew up in Inglewood, California, and had plans to become a dental hygienist. However, she was also of a musical bent, and joined The Young Americans while in high school. While in that group she performed at the Oscars and appeared on The Andy Williams Show, which was one of the top-rated TV network shows of the mid-60s. Not bad.

In her senior year of high school (and this is where wiki timing eludes me) she was a contestant in something called the Inglewood Fire Ball, a firefighter beauty or talent pageant or something, and before the contest was held (how boring was Inglewood in the 1960s? It’s certainly not boring today, although the demographics have changed quite a bit) a reporter covered the upcoming event and noted that Vicki Lawrence bore a striking resemblance to a young Carol Burnett.

This is also curious, because at the time Carol Burnett was not exactly a household name, although she did have a couple of star turns on The Lucy Show in the mid-60s, having done years of stand-up in New York. Vicki’s mother encouraged her to write to Carol Burnett, Carol showed up in Inglewood to observe this (Inglewood, let’s remind ourselves; the past is a foreign country) and signed her up for her upcoming sketch comedy series. That series, The Carol Burnett Show, ran for eleven seasons, and aside from Carol, Vicki was the only one who appeared in all of them.

In season seven there was a one-off skit where Vicki played Thelma Harper, “Mama,” and Carol (who was 16 years her senior) played her daughter Eunice. It was a huge hit, and eventually spun off into its own series, Mama’s Family, in the 1980s, and I have no idea why. The flip side of the false-gold coin that was Dallas and Dynasty? A precursor to Roseanne? Did Vicki Lawrence, she of Inglewood, California, anticipate Senator J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy? But Mama’s Family was more southern?

In any event, and I’ll wrap up, Vicki Lawrence is also known for her chart-topping rendition of “The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia,” which, if you were alive in 1973 and had access to a transistor radio, you could not escape:

On to the recipe!

Mix together with your hands:

2 1/2 pounds lean ground beef
8 ounces Jimmy Dean Sausage (I prefer Sage)
1 cup of crushed saltine
4 beaten eggs
1 16 ounce can of tomato sauce

Directions:

Salt and Pepper to taste A liberal sprinkle of Italian herbs I probably use at least 2 tablespoons Shape mixture into 2 loaves. Use 5 x 9 inch baking pans. Bake at 350 for 1 to 1 1/4 hours.