Echoes from the Loafers’ Club Meeting:

I put my shoes on the wrong feet this morning.

How could you possibly do that?

I had my legs crossed while I was putting on my shoes.

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: conceit is nature’s way of identifying idiots.

The cafe chronicles

He said that he comes to the cafe every day because his wife’s cooking is so bad, mice bring their own cheese to bait the traps in his house. He considered himself to be a good tipper. He tips 20 percent about 10 percent of the time. He told me that he’d headed for Alden, Minnesota, but ended up in Lake Mills, Iowa, instead. He added, “Those roads don’t know what they are doing.”

He hoped his driving faux pas had nothing to do with his age. He knew he was getting long in the tooth when he first became older than a president. Aging is like eating a Dagwood sandwich. When you start out, there appears to be more sandwich than you could eat, but before long you can see the end.

Schooling

The Trix Rabbit had hypnotized me once again into going to school where we crawled under our desks in case of atom bomb attacks and pop quizzes. We were starved for knowledge, but hungry for tater tot hotdish. I wished we’d eaten it with red Kool-Aid, the champagne of nectar. The school bully had no front teeth. He was a bully, but he wasn’t good at it. The thing he was best at in school was being there. I sang like a worn brake drum in choir. Rubber horseshoes were supposed to make the game of horseshoes less dangerous, but I figured horses wore them in rainy weather.

Smaller town

It was a small town far from home that was conveniently located in the middle of nowhere. I checked into the motel. The clerk gave me a brochure showing the events going on in town. There wasn’t a lot going on. That was proven by the photo of me checking into the motel that was in the brochure.

I stopped at the drinking fountain in the park to have a drink on the city. It was sad that the once bustling town now had “closed” as its most common business. Built on a one-way street, the city is so small, that if you drove past it, you’d have to go around the world to get back to it.

Customer comments

Xan Johnson of New Richland told me that the late Johnny Greenwood of New Richland didn’t care how much money he had as long as he could pull another dollar bill from his wallet.

Dr. Albert Flor, a retired dentist from New Richland, whose age has ventured well into the 90s, was asked if he still worked on teeth. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pliers while saying, “I still do some on the side.”

Jim Clark of Stevens Point said that his late friend Don Breilein of New Richland would ask this question, “Where is your sandbox? This cat has to scratch.”

Duane Swenson of rural Waseca said that his phone rang and the caller said, “This survey will take only a few minutes.” Duane replied, “It will take even less time than that,” and hung up.

Ric McArthur of Morpeth, Ontario sent this, “In my day, we had to remember phone numbers, give people directions and don’t get me started on the dinosaurs.”

Craig Jensen of Geneva asked his high school football coach, Jim Clark, if Clark’s grandmother had been an All-American football player. He asked because the coach was fond of telling his players, “Even my grandmother could block and tackle better than you guys.”

Nature notes

Tom Belshan of Glenville asked why turkey vulture numbers have increased. There are several reasons. The banning of DDT and expanded deer and small mammal populations that led to a corresponding increase in the number of wildlife carcasses.

Meeting adjourned.