Echoes from the Loafers’ Club Meeting:

“How is life treating you?”

“It isn’t. It’s making me pay for everything. How about you?”

“If things were any better, I’d be twins.”

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: Someone asked me what powers the wind turbines when there is no wind. It’s road rage and texting while driving. If you want to get more exercise, misplace the remote control for your TV.

The cafe chronicles

He was wearing a T-shirt reading, “In dog beers, I’ve had only one.” My T-shirt should read, “I read T-shirts.”

He stared long at the menu, delaying the inedible. He believed in moving slowly in case he happened to be going in the wrong direction. He’d written a protest song about turning 70 years old. He told everyone that he was 15 years older than he really was so that everyone would tell him how young he looked.

Those thrilling days of yesteryear

I’d sit on the steps and scan the sky, looking for a falling star to wish upon. If the hour was late and bedtime beckoned, I’d wish upon an airplane’s blinking light.

I’d wish that I could travel.

Ibn Battuta said, “Traveling — it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.”

Much of my boyhood traveling was by school bus or farm tractor. We had a cow manure pile that had to be somewhere and the back of the barn seemed a good spot. Cow manure is good fertilizer. One of my jobs was to apply it to farm fields by use of a manure spreader. That was a farm implement, not a politician. It wasn’t a bad job, but it was nice to have it finished. It was a good feeling when it was a dung deal.

Tom Miller of Green Bay, a former classmate, reminded me of the time when the road we lived on was far too muddy to be traversed by school buses. We needed to find our way to a hard-surfaced road where we’d be picked up. Our fathers, not wanting to be burdened with our presence for more days than absolutely necessary, wisely organized and found ways to put us on pavement.

One day, my father took us to the bus with his Allis-Chalmers tractor. We sat on the fenders and the trip was uneventful.

After school, the bus driver, happy to be rid of us, dropped us where he’d found us in the morning. Another neighbor picked us up. He was driving a tractor pulling a manure spreader. He thought that the spreader would be an appropriate conveyance for us.

He might have been right.

Men are right occasionally. Husbands much less often than bachelors.

“You are right,” my wife said in reference to a trivial matter.

“I am?” I was stunned and unsure as to how to accept the news. Being right was foreign territory to me.

I thought it might be a trick, but she appeared sincere.

I didn’t even have to employ a manure spreader.

This week’s travelogue

I spoke near Dixon, Illinois. I visited Ronald Reagan’s boyhood home. He moved there at the age of 9 and described Dixon as “heaven” and considered it his hometown. Reagan didn’t think Ronald sounded tough enough, so he asked people to call him “Dutch,” after his father’s nickname for him, “Dutchman.” The former president said the following things.

“There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go, if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit.”

“We’re going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that have allowed some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share. In theory, some of those loopholes were understandable, but in practice they sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary, and that’s crazy. It’s time we stopped it.”

Nature notes

“There is a male cardinal visiting my feeders. He has a bald head. What’s wrong with him?” Late summer and fall is when people see bald cardinals and blue jays. Staggered feather replacement is the normal pattern for a cardinal’s molt. For an unknown reason, some birds drop all their head feathers at once. The bird’s baldness is caused by an abnormal molt and the head feathers will be replaced.

Meeting adjourned

“Let no man pull you low enough to hate him.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.

Be kind.