One of the lighter subjects taken up in Impromptus today is chuckin’ versus chunkin’. What do you do when you throw something, particularly kind of heavy? The subject arose when I commented, earlier this week, on that great American pastime known as Punkin’ Chunkin’. (You come up with a contraption that will heave a pumpkin as far as possible.)

There has been much mail on this subject, and I will give you a sample — a song lyric, really. A reader wrote to mention “Lynyrd Skynyrd’s haunting song ‘The Ballad of Curtis Loew,’ about ‘the finest picker ever to play the blues.’” Well, “On the day old Curtis died, / Nobody came to pray. / Old preacher said some words / And they chunked him in the clay.” That’s harsh — to be chunked in the clay.