Echoes from the Loafers’ Club Meeting:

“I wish I’d have gone out for baseball when I was in high school.”

“Why?”

“Do you know what I’d be making if I were playing for the Minnesota Twins today?”

“Sure. You’d be making everyone wonder why you are on the team.”

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: I’ve never heard anyone, quartet or otherwise, singing in a barbershop.

I’ve learned

The best way to save face is to keep the lower half of it shut.

If I’ve seen one shopping center, I’ve seen a mall.

My opinion represents those of one seven-billionth of the world.

Mothers, purses and deer

My wife searched for something in her purse. She dug deep for the elusive item, only to discover it was right at the top.

“If it had been a snake, it would have bitten you,” I said. That’s one of the things we say in such instances.

Dad had one check in his wallet. Mom had money in her purse. She was always willing to give me some of her moolah at 6 percent.

Actually, my mother was willing to give her offspring everything.

Jan Jerdee of Albert Lea told me deer are common sights on her lawn. This spring, a doe brought three young triplets to the yard. Because of the May snowstorm, there was little for them to eat. The doe stood up on her back legs to kick persistent crabapples from the branches of a tree. The fawns ate the crabapples. Jan added, “A mother is a mother.”

The chickens weren’t wearing stocking caps

The caller told me he was unemployed. He had spent the winter in Arizona. He figured if he couldn’t afford to eat, he might as well go hungry in warm weather.

When the weather warmed in the spring, we opened the door to the henhouse, permitting the chickens to once again become free range. Tired of being cooped up, the chickens rushed from the henhouse like students coming out of a grade school at recess.

I enjoyed saying, “Gentlemen, start your chickens,” when I opened the door.

A neighbor drew a line through the middle of the floor of his chicken house. That way, a hen could lay it on the line.

The chickens may be loose and the snow has melted, but in the middle of May, I spotted a pickup truck with a mounted snowplow on the front. He wasn’t late for last winter; he was early for next winter. I’m not sure if the driver was pessimistic or optimistic.

When forks fly

My wife and one of her best friends, Linda Brekke of Owatonna, journeyed to Washington, D.C. Linda is a farm broadcaster on the radio and needed to be in our nation’s capital for a convention related to her job. The two attended a function at the Chinese Embassy, where they were fed well. They were given plastic silverware. Linda was using her fork, when the plastic tableware snapped and part of the utensil flew across the banquet hall. Linda was worried that she might have created an international incident.

So far, so good. There has been no retaliation, but please, everyone, keep your fingers crossed.

The chair of the cemetery

I told a kind gentleman at St. Johns Lutheran Church of Elkton that I had done a radio show from the cemetery near that church. I’ve done countless radio shows from cemeteries. Graveyards are lovely places to walk and talk. He told me that he had purchased a monument for his gravesite. It is a bench. That’s nice. It will offer his friends and family a place to sit a spell and visit.

Nature notes

Dead opossums acted as speed bumps on a rural road. Vultures were on the side of the road paying their last respects to a coot.

I sang to the vultures as I drove by, “One of these days, these coots are going to walk all over you.”

To a turkey vulture, our roads are long buffet tables. Vultures are part of nature’s sanitation crew. The coyote is another that feeds heavily on roadkill. However, a study showed that in some urban areas, 40 percent of a coyote’s diet consists of cats. Any cat outdoors is subject to many threats — a coyote is but one of them. A coyote averages 30 pounds, but each time I see one, I reckon it larger.

Meeting adjourned

Be kind and place others at the receiving end of that heavenly combination, a wave and a smile.