Echoes from the Loafers’ Club Meeting:

You are long on appetite and short on manners. Pass the mashed potatoes.

No.

Please pass the mashed potatoes.

Eat something closer to you.

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: We should never mistake vanity for culture.

The cafe chronicles

I was in a small-town cafe in North Dakota. I wrote down my order and bussed my own table. I hoped to make employee of the month and get the coveted parking place.

The server growled that bacon, eggs, and hash browns would go to the highest bidder.

The ruminants were seated at their favorite table.

“If I say it, you can believe it,” was said in all capital letters by the one most likely prone to telling falsehoods. He had one of those beards that grew so wild that I couldn’t help but do a visual search to see if something was peering out of it.

A couple of experienced women sat down at the next table.

One said, “This is my favorite restaurant. I almost always sit at this table. I come here all the time. I’d come here even more often if the food wasn’t so terrible.”

In the neighborhood

The neighbor didn’t have a telephone. He didn’t believe in having a lot of things that cost money. If someone needed to call him, he’d share my phone number. It worked. Any time someone called me and left a message for my neighbor, I’d send my neighbor a letter.

Car talk

A friend, Bruce Aird of Lake Forest, Calif., and I were talking about a certain kind of car. It’s a popular car that you’d recognize if I said the name, but I’m going to spare the car the embarrassment. It probably has a family who doesn’t need to read such things. Bruce described it as a car that should be sold only in pairs and each should come with a hitch so that it could tow the other when it stopped running.

I was the sorriest

I was walking behind three friends from England as we strolled around Vienna. They exemplified the famed English politeness, apologizing quickly for any possible infraction of manners.

I blurted out, “I’m sorry.”

They asked a collective, “Why are you sorry?”

I replied, “Because I’m behind you.”

“Why should that make you sorry?” they asked as a group.

I explained that I was sorry because I’d have liked to have been in front of them.

They were sorry they had asked.

A week later, I was headed home from Carrington, N.D. Traffic was moving along at a brisk pace when suddenly it came to a complete halt about 30 miles north of Minneapolis. We creeped and beeped for a many miles. I wished I could have walked on ahead. Childish doofuses changed lanes with every three cars they managed to squeeze by, zigzagging their way to their destinations. I tried not to judge them. I imagined them apologizing each time they made a move. I wished good things for them and their blessed offspring. I try not to growl about traffic. There might be an accident ahead of me. If I complained, I’d feel like a complete jerk when I saw an ambulance.

Spectacles

I stopped at the eyeglasses place to have my cheaters adjusted. They were irritating my nose, chewing into the flesh on both sides.

I explained my problem to the nice person working there.

She thought she’d be able to solve my predicament posthaste.

She fussed with them some before asking, “Is this the same head you had when you purchased the glasses?”

Lemon bar

I devoured a lemon bar at a feed near Melville, N.D. Lemon bars are good and this one was particularly so. It had a plethora of powdered sugar. So much, that with each bite, powdered sugar filled the air. It looked like snow flurries in June. That’s why I was on The Weather Channel.

Did you know?

Canada’s population is about 11 percent of that of the US.

Nature notes

“Do any birds hibernate?” Not really, but the common poorwill slows its metabolic rate and drops its body temperature, going into a hibernation-like state known as torpor. In periods of cold weather, a poorwill may stay in torpor for several weeks, which allows the bird to go without food when insect prey is unavailable.

Meeting adjourned

“Forgiveness is the economy of the heart. Forgiveness saves the expense of anger, the cost of hatred, the waste of spirits.”—Hannah More.