Echoes from the Loafers’ Club Meeting:

I’ve been thinking.

About what?

Nothing yet.

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: bacon is the candy of meats.

I’ve learned

Dodge good. Ram bad.

The quality of a mirror diminishes with age.

Once you clean out the belongings of a deceased friend or relative, you see your own stuff in a different way.

Why Ole is still serving detention

I was teaching some writing classes to young folks, working with the future overlords of this planet, when I thought of Ole.

Mrs. Swenson saw Little Ole was making faces at other kids on the school playground.

Mrs. Swenson decided to gently admonish the child. Smiling sweetly, the veteran teacher said, “Ole, when I was your age, I was told that if I made ugly faces, my face would freeze and I’d look like that for the rest of my life.”

Little Ole replied, “Well, Mrs. Swenson, you can’t say that you weren’t warned.”

Shopping shenanigans

I moved about the supermarket, looking up one aisle and then down the next. I was trying to find things on my list. The store moves things around. It’s part of the supermarket’s plan to get me to buy things not on my list. It’s fiendishly clever. As I looked up and down, the store’s manager came to my aid. He could tell I needed help because I was goose necking.

An older fellow bumped into my cart with his cart with a “Whoopsiedaisy! I’m looking for a bottle of dried beef about yay big,” he said. “They’ve changed the store all around.”

I knew that and nodded in agreement toward my fellow shopping cart demolition derby contestant.

I compared apples to oranges. I purchased some Pink Lady apples. My favorite apple is the Honeycrisp, but it wasn’t available. Johnny Honeycrisp needs to get busy.

“Did you find everything?” The happy cashier asked me.

“Well, not everything. I wasn’t looking for everything,” I replied.

“Do you have our gas reward card? If you don’t have a gas reward card, would you like to apply for one? Would you like to participate in an online survey? Would you want to donate to a charity? Paper or plastic?”

I felt as if I were up a tree without a paddle.

I’d brought my own bag. I’d hoped that would be enough.

A peregrination

I was in Ghent. It’s the rolle bolle capital of the world. Rolle bolle is like lawn bowling or horseshoes on wheels. Sort of. It has been compared to bocce ball, bowling, curling, horseshoes, and shuffleboard. It’s none of those things. It’s rolle bolle.

In Boyd, I was informed that Good Time Days is the longest continuous celebration in the United States, covering 109 years. That’s reason for celebration.

In Milbank, S.D., I was at the birthplace of American Legion Baseball.

It was in Milbank where I was bitten by my first mosquito of the year on May 24. That seemed about right. I didn’t celebrate.

Poor man’s shoes

Tracy Rosenberg of Marvin, S.D., told me that while in Nepal she encountered a young porter with bad shoes. No shoes might have been an improvement. Tracy felt sorry for him and bought him some new shoes. She saw him a few days later. He was wearing his old shoes. She asked about the ones she’d purchased for him. He’d sold them. Nepal is a very poor country. The young man’s family needed the money more than he needed new shoes.