Echoes from the Loafers’ Club Meeting

The sign on the door says you’re closed.

It always says we’re closed.

Even when you’re open?

We’re always open.

Driving by Bruce’s drive

I have a wonderful neighbor named Bruce. Whenever I pass his driveway, thoughts occur to me, such as: I found two quarters on the ground in two different cities on the same day. I considered taking up moseying about the country and looking for 25-cent pieces. That would be my job. I probably won’t be doing that.

I was at a daylong meeting where all my good ideas involved lunch. One speaker said he wasn’t going to use PowerPoint because he didn’t know how to use PowerPoint. I liked him right off. He told me he had 12 children. “And I love them all the same,” he said, before adding, “Of course, I have my favorites.”

Aw, A&W

My family frequently went for drives. There was no purpose other than looking and looking some more. Then we’d talk about what we’d seen. We looked at road conditions, the advancement of crops, and animals — wild and domestic. We waved at everyone. There is a state law stating you must wave at everyone you see while you travel on gravel roads. We occasionally stopped at the A&W root beer stand. The name came from the founders, Roy W. Allen and Frank Wright. This drive-in had carhops — lovely young women who served customers who remained in their cars. I never saw the carhops do much hopping. A&W offered Papa, Mama, Teen and Baby Burgers. The burgers were based on size, not age. I had to decide which burger and declare whether or not I wanted cheese on it. It was a difficult thing, not unlike trying to solve a perplexing math problem covered in ketchup.

Playing 500

There are days when I’m sluggish. I tell myself that I’m not lazy, I was born tired. When I coached baseball, we’d played a game called 500. I’d pitch to one player as the rest of the team covered the field. The fielders received points for batted balls caught. They got 100 points for a ball caught in the air, 50 points for catching a one hopper, and 25 points for snagging a ground ball before it stopped rolling. The same number of points were deducted for a dropped ball. The game taught baseball skills and it fostered math skills. When one player got 500 points, he became the batter. They learned the fundamentals, the most important of which was to have fun. We played until I grew tired.

Nature notes

I’d been out the door at 4 a.m. I’d awakened without an alarm clock, as I tend to do when I look forward to something. There were birds that needed counting. They were counting on me. I did a Breeding Bird Survey in June. I’ve been doing the same route for many years. I counted birds for three minutes each at 50 regular stops. At one stop, I a fox squirrel walked down a farm drive and right up to my car. It gave me a baleful look while sitting up on its rear legs. Satisfied that I was a harmless man who had been fairly warned, the squirrel ambled back up the drive from whence it had come. It was obviously a watch squirrel.

I watched five wild turkeys walk bean rows. I’d done the same thing when I was a young turkey. I was pleased to see several sandhill cranes fly over. They’d nested there for some years. The day was filled with newly minted robins, grackles and starlings.

I love seeing butterfly weed, it’s a more vivid orange color than a monarch butterfly. Orange isn’t a common color in nature this time of the year. Daisy fleabane presented more rays per flowerhead than I could count.

A red-winged blackbird male flew down from a tree and landed on the back of a Canada goose gander. The gander was in the company of his missus and a few goslings. This makes ganders particularly aggressive, but this guy put his head down and rushed to a pond as the blackbird rode along as if he were in a saddle, pecking and prodding the gander. The goslings and the missus waddled behind. Once in the water, the gander was freed of his tormentor. I hoped the goslings would one day be able to look again at their father as if he were all-powerful.

Meeting adjourned

“Do things for people not because of who they are or what they do in return, but because of who you are.”

— Harold S. Kushner