Echoes from the Loafers’ Club meeting:

“Boy, that was a loud thunderstorm last night. I wish someone would have awakened me.”

“Why?”

“I can’t sleep through thunder and lightning.”

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: the older you get, the harder it is to lose weight, because by then your body and your fat have become good friends.

I’ve learned

A true convenience store would be located along my driveway.

Batting gloves should be outlawed in Major League Baseball. The constant adjusting of those gloves by hitters adds length to games.

The easiest way to find a lost item is to buy a replacement.

The news from Hartland

The Chicken Dance Center offers a class in which students learn the hula in two shakes.

Local man’s funeral had Minnesota Viking players as pallbearers. It was his wish that the Vikings let him down one last time.

Old Man McGinty, the youngest Old Man McGinty ever, walked three miles to school every day. The school was only two blocks from his home, but he knew a long way.

She looked up to me

I could only guess at her age and I’m not good at guessing ages.

She said, “Oh, my stars and garters!”

I’ve never known anyone outside books and movies who said, “Oh, my stars and garters!”

She had to stretch to be five feet tall.

She looked up at me, nearly a foot and a half taller, and said, “I’ve never been that tall.”

I believed her.

Going home

It was the summer of his school reunion.

He walked into one of those big hotel rooms. People from every fool place were there, wearing nametags. He was impressed by the preparation of his classmates in charge of the reunion. He was more impressed by how young and fit his classmates looked.

People asked how he was with equal parts politeness and concern.

It wasn’t long before he realized, with some relief, that his reunion of older graduates was in another room.

He’d recently lost his job of long duration. He growled that they’d never be able to replace him.

I thought about a couple of trees that had fallen in my yard. I wondered how I should replace them. I wondered long enough that a volunteer mountain ash grew in one vacant spot and a dogwood filled the other. They are a perfect fit.

When we think of ourselves as irreplaceable, we’re wrong.

The man told me that the first thing he did upon arrival in his hometown was to drive by the house he grew up in.

It hit me, I can no longer drive by my boyhood home.

It was demolished and replaced.

I can still go home. There’s a road that leads from my mind to my heart.

Hotwire

Elwood P. Dowd in “Harvey,” said, “Years ago my mother used to say to me, she’d say, ‘In this world, Elwood, you must be’ — she always called me Elwood — ‘In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant.’ Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me.”

I could have been pleasant. I could have warned him.

Relatives from the city were visiting. They had a boy my age. We went for a walk to explore the farm. Curiosity caused his hand to touch an electric fence in fine working condition. He jerked away.

“Get a shock?” I asked with a minimum of concern.

“I would have,” he replied, “if I hadn’t been too quick for it.”

Customer comments

Bill Courter, who farms near Jolley, told me it’s so dry in his area that his farm had received only 40 raindrops per 40 acres.

Did you know?

The most frequently searched words on Merriam-Webster.com over the past four months in descending order. 1. pragmatic 2. disposition 3. opportunity 4. didactic 5. esoteric 6. paradigm 7. holistic 8. comradery 9. integrity 10. caveat