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Echoes from the Loafers’ Club Meeting

I had lunch with the county’s chess champion.

How did that go?

It was good, but it took him 20 minutes to pass the ketchup.

Driving by Bruce’s drive

I have a wonderful neighbor named Bruce. Whenever I pass his drive, thoughts occur to me. I’ve encountered the occasional fellow wearing shorts while I was in stores or attending basketball games this winter. The guy dressed for the weather he wanted, not the weather he had.

I wasn’t quite in the same pond with the other ducks, so I watched mallards float on open water on an otherwise iced-covered lake. Ducks have dense layers of insulating, waterproof feathers, countercurrent heat exchange where arterial blood is cooled by venous blood (reducing heat loss through feet and legs), and carry fat reserves. My mind traveled to Mallard, Iowa, which is south of Curlew and north of Plover. The town has 265 residents and used to have a high school with a memorable school cheer: “Black and Gold, Gold and Black, Mallard Ducks go quack, quack, quack.” In Minnesota, I grew up playing “Duck, duck, gray duck.” In Iowa, they played “Duck, duck, goose.” I wonder if they played “Duck, duck, bear” in Alaska? They probably didn’t.

A conversation with

my neighbor Crandall

My Uncle Clarence died. He left my Aunt Clara $100,000 from his life insurance, but she sure misses him.

I don’t doubt that. They were married for a long time.

They were hitched forever, Al. She misses seeing his attempted smiling and finishing all his sentences for him. Why, she misses him so much, she’d give $1,000 of that $100,000 just to have him back.

I was thinking — in the bathroom

I opened the box and slid a new tube of toothpaste from it. It was a bittersweet occasion. I was happy to have made it through another tube of toothpaste, but—Wow! I went through another tube of toothpaste. I wonder what my toothpaste tube lifetime total is? A tube of toothpaste is magical. The first 90% of the toothpaste lasts one week. The last 10% lasts three months.

I’ve learned

Matt Dillon of “Gunsmoke” was shot 56 times, knocked unconscious 29 times and stabbed 3 times in 20 years. Doc Adams was a miracle worker.

The worst part of parallel parking is a witness.

It’s easier to write in cursive than it is to read cursive.

The birthplace of Kool-Aid is Hastings, Nebraska.

“Absolutely nothing” spelled backwards is “gnihton yletulosbA,” which means absolutely nothing.

The word “short” is shorter than “shorter.”

Just because something is edible doesn’t mean it should be eaten.

Ask Al

“Why is it called a funny bone?” Because everyone laughs when you hit it.

“What do they put on the roads in Minnesota and Iowa during the winter?” Artificial snow.

“Where do squirrels go during a tornado?” Everywhere.

“I have mice in my house. How do I get rid of the pests?” Stop calling them pests. Call them pets instead.

Bad jokes department

The inventor of the knock-knock joke won the No-bell Prize.

I crossed a boomerang with a piranha and got something that will come back and bite me.

What is made of leather and sounds like a sneeze? A shoe.

Why did the crab cross the road? It didn’t. It used the sidewalk.

How many people with no sense of humor does it take to screw in a lightbulb? One.

Nature notes

Some starlings show yellow on their bills in January, changing from black as the breeding season gets closer.

“How can one blue jay tell if another is a male or a female?” In ways that we haven’t a clue. They likely see differences in each other’s feathers in the ultraviolet spectrum.

“When did opossums show up in Minnesota?” They arrived in the southeastern part of the state around 1900. They aren’t well-equipped to survive cold winters.

“How does a blue jay swallow so many sunflower seeds on a visit to a feeder?” They have a throat sac called a gular pouch, which they can fill and cough up the seeds later to eat or cache.

“What do boxelder bugs eat while in my house?” They suck the juices from the leaves and developing seeds of boxelder and maple trees, but not enough to hurt the trees. While they’re happy to spend the winter in the cozy confines of your house, they eat nothing during that time. They’re generally inactive but might become mobile on sunny days, moving toward windows.

Meeting adjourned

“There is no small act of kindness. Every compassionate act makes large the world.”–Mary Anne Radmacher.