Echoes From the Loafers' Club Meeting
"Where do boxelder bugs go in the winter?"
"Search me."
"Never mind. I don’t want to know that badly."
Driving by the Bruces
I have two wonderful neighbors — both named Bruce — who live across the road from each other. Whenever I pass their driveways, thoughts occur to me, such as: there is so much roadwork that it’d be cheaper to erect signs reading "No road work ahead" on the roads not under construction.
I’ve learned
• Dirty dishes are patient.
• To use a barber who has the same amount of hair as I do.
• The good old days were when we didn't talk about the good old days.
Ask Al
• "Why shouldn't I put my baby's dirty diapers in the laundry bin?" You don't want to hamper his movements.
• "What is the best way to ripen tomatoes?" Keep them in your armpits. This also keeps them from being stolen.
• "What is the best way to knot a necktie?" It doesn’t matter if you Windsor knot, it’s how you play the game.
• "What do you know about rugby?" I know it’s an insect found in carpets.
Ambushed by jacks
Jacks is played by throwing small, six-pointed metal pieces that are picked up between bounces of a small ball. You toss the ball into the air, pick up one jack, and catch the ball after one bounce. When you have collected all the jacks one at a time, throw them again, and pick them up two at a time (twosies). When you get to threesies, you pick up three sets of three first, then the remaining jack. Continue until tensies. Your turn continues until you miss the ball, fail to pick up jacks, move a jack, or drop a jack. Feral jacks hid about our home, waiting to surprise unsuspecting bare feet. I stepped on them. It still hurts.
How we spend our time
I watched a dog watch a car drive by. I thought to myself that it didn’t take much to amuse a dog. Then I realized that I was watching a dog watch a car drive by.
My father enjoyed fishing. He had a tackle box full of hooks, sinkers, bobbers, and a couple of lures. Many had been jury-rigged. Injured ones were wrapped in thin wire. A dairy farmer, Dad didn't have much time to fish, but he looked in that tackle box and remembered.
Lake Superior wasn’t for sale
When my father was looking to buy land, an overzealous realtor showed him a slough thinly disguised as a dairy farm. The smiling salesman said, "All this land needs is some good people."
He should have added, "Who are good swimmers."
The Dust Bowl wasn’t a bowling alley
As I drove to a speaking gig in Nebraska on a windy day, I considered wind turbines. There should be a wind farm in Washington, D.C.
I listened to an actress portray a woman who lived during the Dust Bowl. She asked, "Why should we pay taxes in Nebraska? Our farm has blown to South Dakota."
She added that by 1934, the storms came so frequently that she’d learned to determine a storm’s point of origin by the color of the dust — black from Kansas, red from Oklahoma, gray from Colorado or New Mexico, and yellow from Montana or the Dakotas.
Customer comments
• Harlan Lutteke of Alden recalled people salting green apples before eating.
• Ric McArthur of Ontario wrote, "Don't worry about old age, it doesn't last long."
• Judy Abrego of Albert Lea said, "When you step over it, that's uffda. When you step in it, that’s feeda."
• Tom Benson of Hartland told me that he’d gone to a funeral with Otto Sorenson. They looked at the deceased and Tom said, "He looks good." Otto replied, "He should, he just got out of the hospital.
Did you know?
• What do the words assess, banana, dresser, grammar, potato, revive, and uneven have in common? If the first letter is placed at the end of the word and the word is spelled backwards, it remains unchanged.
The top 10 books people claim to have read, but haven’t, are in descending order, 1984 by George Orwell, War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, A Passage to India by E.M. Forster, The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë.
• Last year, Americans paid $1.7 billion to play fantasy sports.
Meeting adjourned
"Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for kindness."--Seneca