Echoes From the Loafers’ Club Meeting

It’s my birthday.

Happy birthday. I hope I look as good as you do when I’m your age.

Don’t worry, you did.

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 may be crazy, but I can go normal at any time. Everywhere I go, someone is asking for money or bemoaning the lack thereof. It’s obvious that we can no longer afford ourselves. At a church gathering, everyone was asked how long he or she had been married. One man declared 60 years of wedded bliss. We all applauded. We found out later that the 60 years had been divided among three wives.

It happens in threes

Grandma said that everything happens in threes. That explained my early difficulties with arithmetic.

Buying a calculator didn’t help. I bought a cheap one. It worked fine except it was missing the number nine.

Grandma’s belief was most often applied to deaths, but covered things both bad and good.

Iris, Ruth and Les. When it came to being nice people, they each carried a considerable reputation.

Iris Bell and her husband Harvey owned the greenhouse in Hartland for many years. Iris was fond of saying, “The world wasn’t built in a day. That’s because Agnes wasn’t in charge.” Agnes was her older sister and apparently, someone who made sure things got done. Virginia Anderson, Iris’s daughter, called her mother’s sayings, Irisisms.

Ruth Pedersen was a neighbor. My father, a farmer, thought “moving to town” was a euphemism for dying. Ruth didn’t believe that. She moved to town and lived fully. I stopped to see Ruth one day. She and a friend were putting together a jigsaw puzzle. It was a difficult one, something like a million-piece snowstorm. I brought her a couple of jigsaw puzzles and a hammer. I thought the hammer might aid in fitting the parts together. If all you have is a hammer, the whole world is a nail. Fortunately, Ruth had more than a hammer. One of the things Ruth had was something that was supposed to help battle the ravages of rheumatism. Drunken raisins. Each day, she ate six golden raisins soaked in rum. Years later, a kind reader from North Carolina sent me a gift of drunken raisins.

Les Honstad of Freeborn and his younger brother married sisters. Les and his wife had a long-lasting marriage, but his brother’s ended in divorce. Les referred to his brother as his favorite former brother-in-law.

I’m happy that these three people were a part of my life. I’m striving to be half as nice as they were.

Q-and-A

Just as in school, the questions don’t always match my answers. I love essay tests. I can say “I don’t know” in 500 words.

“How do you like your toilet paper to roll — over or under?” I don’t care. I just like the toilet paper to be there.

“How do you travel?” By request.

“What’s the name of the north wind?” Brrrrrr!

“Why are there gopher mounds in my hayfield?” The gophers are competing to be the alfalfa male.

In search of perfection

One day, I walked along Lake Superior, watching a harlequin duck and a long-tailed duck as I listened to the gunshot and thunder sounds made by cracking ice. Not long after that, I watched my son, Brian, coach his girls’ basketball team to their 22nd consecutive victory. He has some talented players who buy into the program — most of the time. Perfection and humans don’t spend much time hanging out together.

My marriage and my family are as close as I’ve come to perfection. When we had reached one of those marital milestones, 25 years of wedded bliss, a friend looked at my wife and said, “It doesn’t seem possible that you have been married for 25 years.”

Then he turned to me and said, “Look at you. Are you sure it’s been only 25 years?”

I don’t want to be perfect. It’d get in the way of happiness.

Nature notes

“Where did all the birds go?” Bird populations fluctuate. Habitat changes — trees removed, water levels altered or new construction could be why you’re seeing fewer birds. Natural food supplies–cones, fruits, seeds and insects–vary from year to year. Birds go where the food is. Weather or predators could move birds. Such fluctuations of bird populations are typically short-term, but could become long run.