Joe Kennedy

Joe Kennedy is routinely named the region's best writer by readers of The Roanoker magazine.

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Jose Cuervo is a brand of tequila.

Adriana La Cerva is a character from "The Sopranos." Adriana La Cuervo is a creation of my fertile mind, unaided by tequila or any other mind-altering chemical.

In the May 23 episode of HBO's series about the New Jersey Mob, Adriana suffered a sudden, violent eradication in some woods.

When I wrote about that in last Wednesday's column, I typed her last name as I'd copied it, by hand, from "The Sopranos" home page on the Internet. (The page with the cast names printed out too lightly to be seen.)

Unfortunately, my handwriting was hard to read, my spelling as wrong as the instinct that told Adriana she could spill underworld secrets to the FBI, persuade Christopher Moltisanti, her fiance, to join her in the Witness Protection Program and live happily ever after.

I put Adriana in a family not of New Jersey mobsters but of Mexican tequila distillers.

She'd have been better off with the Mexicans.

A made nun

Sister Frances Mary was my second-grade teacher. I don't know whether she's still alive, but my fear is that she'll show up at my desk, wielding her metal-edged ruler and whacking my left hand the way she did from the day she started teaching us penmanship - in 1955.

Adriana was my favorite character in "The Sopranos," and I and countless others mourned her even though we knew her expungement was overdue. Mob chieftain Tony Soprano doesn't take kindly to stool pigeons, no matter how beautiful - in a hard way - they are.

Sister Frances Mary didn't take kindly to sloppy scriveners, no matter how sincerely they struggled to make an "O" look like an "O," not an "8."

Like Tony, she didn't care where your heart was. She just cared about results.

I'd rather have a sit-down with him than with her. At least he responds to a simple kind of logic. She never did.

How logical was it to smack somebody on the hand to make him relax and develop a fluid writing stroke?

That's neither here nor there.

Adriana will never manage the Crazy Horse nightclub again. She'll never argue with Christopher about his drug use or plead with him to stick with his 12-step program.

She is only a memory - still available, fortunately, in reruns.

Sister Frances Mary will never stop looming at my shoulder, blocking out the sickly glow of the classroom's fluorescent lights and letting me have it - WHAP! - with that infernal ruler.

She is a memory - still available, unfortunately, in my nightmares.

Going to the mats

I'm turning into more of a memory every day.

I'll never learn to write legibly, never stop having to answer questions from DMV clerks about forms I've just filled out, never stop hurrying back to the office to decipher the hieroglyphics I've scribbled in my reporter's notebook.

Facts, facts, facts.

Jose Cuervo received a land grant from the King of Spain in 1758, before Mexico became an independent republic.

In 1795, King Carlos IV of Spain transferred the deed to Jose Maria Guadalupe Cuervo and gave him the first concession to commercially produce tequila, a powerful liquor known as the "wine of the earth."

I got those off the Internet.

Online, a bottle of Jose Cuervo Especial goes for $20.90. A bottle of Cuervo 1800 Anejo Tequila sells for $47.51.

I'll take both, and go into hiding.

Adriana is history, but Sister Frances Mary may still be out there.