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Echoes from the Loafers’ Club Meeting

This has been a day to remember.

Why is that?

I don’t remember.

Driving by Bruce’s drive

I have a wonderful neighbor named Bruce. Whenever I pass his drive, thoughts occur to me. It had cleared up cloudy with a dry drizzle and it was a good day—in the Top 10 days of the week. Mums the word and pumpkin spice the words.

My boyhood financial advisors were any enterprises selling baseball cards. I’d earn a little moola walking beans for the neighbors and despite my father’s suggestion I put it in the bank, I invested it. For a nickel, I could buy a pack of six (as I recollect) Topp’s Baseball cards with a stick of lousy bubblegum included. I’d rush out of the store to find the nearest steps or curb to sit on and begin opening the wax paper covering the cards. There was a TV commercial for Heinz Ketchup featuring the “Anticipation” song by Carly Simon. No ketchup could come close to the anticipation of discovering the identity of the player cards hidden inside. Part of that ad said, “It’s slow good.” That’s what I hoped for from the pack, but first, I’d offered a wish and a prayer that the cards wouldn’t be a catcher named Hobie Landrith, a pitcher named Turk Lown or another pitcher named Don Mossi. It wasn’t because they were poor players, it was because I got their cards frequently. Instead of getting a Mickey Mantle or a Sandy Koufax, I’d get another Don Mossi. I believed I’d cornered the market on Don Mossi cards. What happened to all those duplicates? Some became pawns in a game of card flipping. From a standing position, the first player took a card and with a flip of the wrist, let it drop to the floor, where it landed heads (picture) or tails (statistics). If both cards were heads or tails, player #2 won both cards. If they didn’t match, the cards went to player #1. Doubles were made for clipping with clothespins to the spokes of a bicycle to make an engine sound. It sounded more like a roulette wheel. Don Mossi became one of my prime spokesmen. On Saturday, those baseball cards came alive during the televised “Game of the Week” sponsored by Falstaff Beer. The announcers were Pee Wee Reese and Dizzy Dean. Ol’ Diz sang “The Wabash Cannonball” during lulls in the action and made advocates of good grammar grimace by saying things like, “he slud into second base.” Many of the Falstaff Beer spots were a cartoon featuring The Old Pro.

There are no replays, instant or otherwise, available for opening those baseball card packs. Pity. I wish I could go back and treat Don Mossi with a little more kindness.

I’ve learned

Aaron Rodgers, a quarterback for the New York Jets, was injured in the first game of the season. He was paid $9,373,999 per snap. I’m sure there is an online fundraiser for him.

It’s cheaper to fill a gas tank that’s half-full than one that’s empty.

Politicians are those who will double-cross that bridge when they come to it.

The cold that a man gets and the one a woman catches are different. No man has a casual cold. Every cold contracted by a male is catastrophic.

Worrying works. Most of the things we worry about never happen.

Nature notes

It was a morning easy to embrace with its soft clouds and tenderhearted breezes. October brings blue jay and yellow-rumped warbler migration, starling murmurations and many meadowhawk dragonflies, which I see into November some years.

I watched lovely Franklin’s gulls. Only three large wetlands have been used repeatedly as nesting sites in Minnesota over the past 100 years: Agassiz NWR and Thief Lake WMA in Marshall County, and Heron Lake in Jackson County. Breeding adults have black heads with white crescents above and below the eyes. The upperparts are dark gray; the legs and bill are reddish. In non-breeding plumage, the black heads reduce to a patchy black to gray hood covering the top of the head and neck. The forehead and throat become white and the legs and feet turn nearly black, as does the bill, which retains a reddish tip. Named after the Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin and originally called Franklin’s rosy gull for its rosy-colored breast and belly, early settlers called it the prairie dove.

Meeting adjourned

“Life is just a short walk from the cradle to the grave and it sure behooves us to be kind to one another along the way.—Alice Childress.