Echoes From the Loafers’ Club Meeting

You look familiar.

Oh, yeah?

I think I’ve seen your face somewhere else.

I don’t think so. It’s never been anywhere other than on the front of my head.

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: Brenda Kampen of New Richland makes these nifty signs for the house. They look spiffy hanging on a wall. I hear them called boards, but they seem much more than that. Whatever they are, they are wonderful. My wife and I just picked up another one at a charity auction. It reads, “It is what it is.” Whether a sign or a board, it is what it is. Someone important to me, used to say, “It is what it is. It ain’t what it ain’t.” She wasn’t my English teacher.

The cafe chronicles

“What would you like for breakfast?” asked the friendly waitress.

“Four strips of crispy bacon, two eggs over easy, hash browns and English muffins with peanut butter.”

“Nice try. Here’s your oatmeal.”

It’s all part of my education

Our shop teacher was involved in a chess game against a student. I wasn’t playing him. I’d lost the previous match to our instructor. Losing was a wise move for an underling.

Seeing as how my mystery woodworking project was in a standby position after having been glued and clamped, I had a bit of free time. Besides, my creation needed proper aging to define its identity. It turned out to be a stick and not a good one. Knowing that idle hands are the devil’s workshop, I needed another project. I found a magazine. I used tin snips to cut out some of the larger letters from the periodical and utilized wood glue to paste the letters onto a sheet of notebook paper. This way, I fashioned a ransom note to leave for the home economics teacher. It read, “We have your scissors. Will exchange for cookies.”

Taking the elevator up

I was going up in an elevator in a tall hotel when I thought about the elevators of my youth. They were grain elevators, the skyscrapers of the rural landscape. Most small towns had one. There was an elevator in the largest city near our farm, Albert Lea, which was of a different kind. It was in a building and business both titled, Skinner, Chamberlain and Company. This department store, which seemed the size of the world to me, advertised itself as having “Everything to eat and wear.”

It also had an escalator. My memory told me that it was an optimistic escalator and went only one direction — up. The elevator was similar to the one I rode in at the hotel, only with a shorter route.

I’d just received a call from a cousin about a death in the family. I instantly felt the loss.

The hotel elevator stopped at a floor to let someone off.

Life is like an elevator. On your way up, you have to stop and let others off.

As your age gains more experience, the elevator makes more stops and more people get off.

Tales of a traveling man

After I’d absentmindedly said, “Yabba-dabba-doo,” I needed to explain who Fred Flintstone was to a fellow as we waited outside a pay toilet in Hungary. The Hungarian was impressed, I’m sure, that I knew that Fred Flintstone was a bronto-crane operator at the Slate Rock and Gravel Company. I hope that I didn’t do too much damage to international relations.

While visiting the Wright Brothers Museum in North Carolina, I wondered if there would be any paper airplanes if it hadn’t been for Orville and Wilbur. I knew that thanks to origami, kites and people like Leonardo da Vinci, paper airplanes had preceded the Wright’s flight at Kitty Hawk.

I was in Anchorage, Alaska, population 301,010 and 1,000 moose, where I’d arrived wakeful and blurry-eyed at my sleeping accommodations, wondering if I wanted 2B or not 2B? I ended up in room 2A.

Nature notes

“Why are birds banded?” Research and management projects find bird-banding data useful. Individual identification of birds aids the study of dispersal and migration, behavior and social structure, lifespan and survival rate, reproductive success and population growth. Sampling wild birds helps determine the prevalence of disease in the population. An annual analysis of banding information from game birds is essential for developing hunting regulations and detecting changes in waterfowl populations.

Meeting adjourned

“It is higher and nobler to be kind.” — Mark Twain