Echoes From the Loafers’ Club Meeting

It bothers me.

What bothers you?

You know, when I’m talking and I can’t find the right, er, uh, um…

Word?

That’s it!

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: You know you’re getting old if your wisdom creaks. Failing doesn’t make a failure.

Getting shot for gas

Not long ago, I was shot to health. The doctor lined up the shots and a needle-wielding nurse gave them to me. I tried to count the inoculations, but failed in the attempt.

I rang the bells for the Salvation Army recently. That gives me pleasure, but my back stiffens after a few hours. It’s a lingering effect of years of playing football. I should never have tried to run around my own end.

The supermarket where I rang, advertised flu shots. The shot came with gas points. I’d receive 20 cents off a gallon of gas for getting a flu shot. Life is good.

When I was having service work done on my vehicle, I looked at a tiny sports car with a big price tag in the showroom. I was wondering what the car would be when it grew up, when a salesman walked up to me and said, “What would it take to get you into this baby today?”

I told him that it would take a large trust fund and an even larger shoehorn. I couldn’t get enough flu shots to keep it in gas.

I can smell it as if it were yesterday

She was the perfect hostess except for one thing. The Earl grey tea. I think Earl grey is the lutefisk of the tea world. People either love it or they can’t stand it. I’m in the latter group. I drank it with a forced smile. I made a face as if a car had run over my foot. The tea tasted like dirt stirred in hot water with a few flowers tossed in. The bergamot orange annoyed me. It smelled fine, but tasted like swill.

I remember the year when I bought my wife some expensive perfume. We were bookish and broke, so it was quite an investment. I got it for no reason, which meant I gave it as a gift to make up for something I’d said or something I should have said after having had a big bowl of stupid for breakfast. The perfume was more than I could have easily afforded, so I determined to smell it slowly.

Smells are wonderful at bringing memories. I remembered having a big day of shoveling chicken, pig and cow manure. That’s the trifecta for a dung scooper. While I was shoveling, I’d think how great my life would be when I wasn’t covered with manure. I whistled while I worked. Actually, I did more whistling than work.

When I shoveled the chicken manure, there was some pheasant exhaust included. That was because of Phil.

Phil was a rooster pheasant. He wasn’t that pleasant. He’d been rescued while still in the egg after his mother had been killed by a mower while sitting on her nest in an alfalfa field. I took the clutch of pheasant eggs and put them under a banty hen that incubated, hatched and raised them. One by one, the wildness took the pheasants and they wandered off, never to return. Soon all the pheasants had left except Phil, who had no apparent desire to leave the friendly confines of the henhouse. Phil wasn’t well behaved. Banty roosters are known for their fighting ability, but Phil battered them as if they were fish. Each of Phil’s days appeared to be part of a villainous enterprise set on world domination.

Back to the Earl Grey tea. The woman’s dog entered the kitchen and presented me with a Christmas goose. It was a surprise.

I asked her what her dog’s name was. She told me it was Kevin. I told her that I thought Kevin was an interesting name for a canine. She said that she’d named her dog after her ex-husband. She enjoyed the occasional rebuke, “Bad Kevin!”

Nature notes

Young blue jays might be more likely to migrate than adults, but adults also migrate. Some jays migrate one year, but not the next, and then head south again the following year. Science is unable to determine why they migrate when they do.

Meeting adjourned

Ephesians 4:32 says, “Be kind to each other.”