March 29, 2024

The BOOB Girls: The Burned Out Old Broads at Table 12

They may be old and they may be burned out here and there physically, but four retired wacky widows are coming to your community. Fictional characters in comedy-mystery novels who meet daily at Table 12 in Meadow Lakes Retirement Community, the “girls” will bring their Table 12 to the Osceola Public Library 7 p.m. Oct. 11. The series is being made into a musical by two Omaha composers and being pitched as a television series called “Table 12” in Los Angeles.

Joy Johnson of Omaha will present a program about her books, jokes and characters. There are eight books in the series: “The BOOB Girls: The Burned Out Old Broads at Table 12,” “BOOB Girls II: Lies, Spies and Cinnamon Rolls,” “BOOB Girls III: Sandhills and Shadows” and “BOOB Girls IV: Murder at Meadow Lakes.” Book five is “The Secret of the Red Cane,” in honor of all women who grew up with Nancy Drew who is 80-years-old now and a BOOB Girl herself. BOOB Girls VI, is titled “From the Eye of the Moose” and is a take-off of the old Abbott and Costello scary movies. “Ten Little Puritans,” BOOB Girls VII and BOOB GIRLS VIII: “Learning to Love Willie” has just been released. All the books have laugh-out-loud components.

The first book will premiere on stage in Omaha later this year as “The BOOB Girls: The Musical.”

“I have a soapbox in the books,” Johnson said. “I think older women, the seasoned Nancy Drews in our lives, are beautiful and not just spiritually or emotionally but physically. Just look at us. Our faces are chiseled by tears and laughter. Our hair is blown thin and white by winds of experience and there is so much knowledge and wisdom in our heads, we can’t hold it all so it trickles down through the rest of our bodies and that’s why we get thicker as we age.”

One Burned Out Old Broad who was a BOOB Girl fan was comedian Phyllis Diller. Seven years ago, Johnson received a card.

“It had a bright red stiletto on the front and inside it simply said, ‘Thank you for writing this delightful book. Phyllis Diller.’ Believe me, I checked the address and it was Hollywood,” Johnson said. “The next morning I wrote to her and asked her to endorse the books. She wrote back right away and said, ‘Use these words. The BOOB Girls are the GOOD Girls.’ It’s on the cover of every book.”

Will there be a ninth BOOB Girls adventure?

“Definitely,” Johnson said.

Characters in the books are characters indeed. Maggie Patten is a retired rancher from the Sandhills of western Nebraska, Hadley Joy Morris-Whitfield is a retired socialite, Dr. Robinson Leary a retired black professor and Mary Rose McGill represents mature housewives. New BOOB Girls, including a spy and a gypsy, appear in the books as well as a retired homicide detective named Marge Aaron.

“Say it fast and it’s margarine, so she’d butter be good,” Johnson quipped. “The comedy-mysteries show us there is life after retirement and laughter can be found, even in widowhood. All the BOOB Girls are both - retired and widowed.”

The author, a humorist and international speaker has one wish for her audience – to “laugh so hard, tears run down your leg.”

Prior to writing the series, Johnson co-founded Centering Corporation, North America’s oldest and largest bereavement resource center, along with her late husband, Dr. Marvin Johnson, and was also founder of Ted E. Bear Hollow, Omaha area’s center for grieving children. She was an internationally recognized speaker on grief before writing the novels. She is also a native Iowan, being born and raised in Creston, where she learned to write by working in high school and college on the local newspaper, the Creston News Advertiser.

“Laughter is not a defensive mechanism,” she says, “it’s an offensive mechanism. We can attack our grief and sorrows with a good laugh. And as one of the characters says, ‘Laughter is exercise. It’s jogging on the inside.’”