Echoes from the Loafers’ Club Meeting:

Duane has the itis.

I don’t think there is such a thing as the itis.

I know. There’s more to it, but I can’t remember what it is.

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: Aging is the only way to get older.

It wasn’t the Spanish Inquisition

As a writer, I ask many questions.

I was far from home when, in an effort to make small talk, I asked a fellow if he knew where Hartland was.

He replied, “Why, is it missing?”

People ask questions in return. That’s nice.

“How did you ever get out of the second grade?” One of the kids I started school with became my teacher and she let me go.

I watched two of my granddaughters shoot baskets. You don’t have to make them to shoot them. The Pulitzer Prize winner is in the first grade and the surgeon is in the second. They are filled with vim and vigor. I’m surprised kids aren’t too tired to grow up.

The varsity basketball game began with players fist bumping the referees and the opposing coach, and ended with the two teams lining up, touching hands and telling one another, “Good game.” The commingled voices sounded like an ancient chant.

It might be a suitable way to end a workday.

“Good work, good work, good work…”

Tom Benson of Hartland asked me, “What is it exactly that you do?” He was being funny, but I do get that question often. I’m a writer. That means that it looks like I’m doing nothing most of the time.

I was driving. I do that routinely. I bought a different car recently. The miles were overpowering my old one. Someone asked if my new vehicle had heated seats. It does, but I have to heat them with my rear end.

As I motored down the road, it was 15 degrees and freezing rain was falling. Windshield wipers struggled to clear the glass. It doesn’t seem fair to receive rain at that temperature, but life is unfair.

The atmosphere is layered. Most precipitation starts in the cloud as snow. If it falls through a layer of air that has a temperature ­greater than 32 degrees Fahrenheit, it melts into rain. If the temperature at ground level is below freezing, the water may refreeze in the air and become sleet. If the layer of sub-freezing air at ground level is thin, the precipitation falls as rain and freezes upon touching a freezing object. For it to snow, all layers of air that the snow falls through must be sub-freezing.

I understand, but it still seems unjust.

Someone else asked if San Andreas Fault is in Minnesota. My wife assures me that everything here is Al’s Fault.

Here and there

Scott Batt of Newton, Iowa, sent a text that he meant to finish with, “Call in a while.” Thanks to autocorrect, it arrived as, “Call of the wild.”

I was at a fundraising auction in Green Isle. The lady seated next to me snagged some dandy homemade dishtowels. She was happy to get them. Her husband asked what they were for. I’ll bet he found out.

Comments on euphemisms for death

Marcel Stratton of Rollag wrote, “There is an old one of French origin: ‘Chewing dandelions by the roots.’ My French grandmother used this expression.”

Lona Falenczykowski of Mankato offered this, “Gnawing at the roots of daisies.”

Ethel Olson of Hartland died at age 92. Her son Darwyn said that his mother was still mowing the lawn when she was 90. Perhaps a new euphemism could be, “She’s stopped mowing the lawn.”

Nature notes

“Do goldfinches migrate?” The American goldfinch is a short distance migrant. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology found that goldfinches move south in the winter to areas where the minimum January temperature is no colder than 0 degrees Fahrenheit on average. Goldfinches tend to be nomadic. Those who feed birds notice their sporadic visits.

Talking with the Holstein

The Holstein is a retired dairy cow, so she has time to talk. I mentioned something that made me feel like a kid again.

The Holstein chewed her cud thoughtfully before saying, “If I want to feel like a calf again, I get some bubble wrap.”