Echoes from the Loafers’ Club Meeting:

What’s your brother doing these days?

He’s racing cars.

That doesn’t surprise me. He always was a fast runner.

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: Any direction can feel like progress. Autocorrect has become my worst enema. You can do something about the weather. You can talk about it.

The cafe chronicles

“There is a beetle in my hotdish!” complained the diner.

“Shush,” said the waitress. “Everyone will want one.”

When I was a small boy and the only toy that came with any meal was a fork, I didn’t want to eat food that was touching other food on my plate. Then I fell in love with hotdishes. The various food items in a hotdish not only touch one another, they hug.

If I’m sitting and not eating from a plate of hotdish sitting in front of me, it’s because I have no silverware and I’m waiting until the food cools enough so that I could eat it by hand.

The man told me that I was lucky to be in a great restaurant. “The worst thing you’ll find here is the food,” he said with a smile.

He told me that he had been married for 50 years, or as he put it, he’d been involved in an 18,262-night stand.

My wife and I haven’t been married that long, but we hope to make it. I married up. “What are you thinking about, honey?” is one of my wife’s favorite questions.

“Nothing,” I answered, trying not to squirm in my chair.

“That’s what you said you were thinking about when I asked this morning,” she said.

“I know,” I replied. “I’m still not through.”

It’s all relative

I spoke at the Hoover Auditorium in Lakeside, Ohio. A woman asked for my autograph after my talk. I signed happily, still amazed that anyone would want my scrawled signature. I inquired about her family. She had one son. He was a doctor who specialized in knee replacements. I asked her if she had availed herself of his expertise. She said, “Only to mow my lawn.”

My wife is a much better mower of lawns than I am. She pays greater attention to the job. She was mowing the lawn while I was brewing a cup of tea. My wife’s cellphone, perched on the kitchen table, dinged whenever a text arrived. I thought of it as another angel getting his wings.

My wife’s great grandfather, Rezin Nelson, was born in Pennsylvania in 1837. His parents moved to Wisconsin and in 1862, he enlisted in Company A, 32nd Wisconsin Infantry, fought in the Civil War and was discharged after one year. In 1863, he moved to Minnesota, settling in Wilton Township in Waseca County. In 1865, he re-enlisted, this time in the First Minnesota Heavy Artillery where he served until the war’s end. On March 18, 1866, he married Rhoda Sutlief, a daughter of Asa Sutlief, the first white settler in Waseca County.

Maybe Rezin was one of those who got his wings.

The Hartland Geographic Society

I was working in a state that shares the most borders with other states. Any idea what state that was? Tennessee and Missouri each share borders with eight other states. Tennessee shares with Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and Missouri. Missouri shares borders with Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska.

I spoke in the Show-Me State. Congressman Willard Duncan Vandiver is credited with coining the phrase when he declared in 1899, “I come from a state that raises corn and cotton and cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me.”

Nature notes

An odonate is a predatory insect characterized by a long, slender, often brightly colored body, two pairs of transparent veined wings, large compound eyes and an aquatic larval stage. Dragonflies and damselflies. The easiest way to tell whether an odonate is a dragonfly or damselfly is to see how it holds its wings at rest. If they are flat and parallel to the ground, it’s a dragonfly. If the wings are held together over the back, it’s a damselfly. Dragonflies fly more than damselflies. Damselflies perch more than dragonflies.

Meeting adjourned

“If you must choose between being right or being kind, choose kind.” — Bob Perks