Echoes from the Loafers’ Club Meeting

I feel as if I’d eaten 15 pancakes.

How many did you eat?

Fourteen.

Why 14?

Because eating 15 pancakes makes me feel ill.

Driving by Bruce’s drive

I have a wonderful neighbor named Bruce. Whenever I pass his driveway, thoughts occur to me, such as: People are always looking for signs. I’ve found that “Road work ahead” signs indicate that there is road work ahead. With road construction and a plentitude of potholes, my bones have been rattled and my rims have been bent. Emma and Liam were the most common baby names for 2017, Emma for the fourth straight year. Boy’s names in order were Liam, Noah, William, James and Logan. Girls in descending order were Emma, Olivia, Ava, Isabella and Sophia. There were two multi-colored Asian lady beetles on my car as I left home. I can’t say their names were Liam and Emma, but I can’t say they weren’t either. The one riding on the windshield managed to stay in place for 80 miles. The one clinging to the driver’s side window hung on for 107 miles. That was almost as impressive as the driver of the pickup truck ahead of me on a two-lane road who kept his right turn signal on for 27 miles.

The cafe chronicles

The fellows around the table were partaking in the original social media, talking. They remembered life before the internet.

Jocosity was rampant. The waitress arrived to explain the change in drink sizes. The medium was now large, the large had become extra large and the stupendous required two bathroom breaks to get down. She wanted no questions about the disappearance of the small drinks.

“Everything on the menu looks good,” said one diner.

“It’ll get over that once it hits your plate,” another responded.

Here and there

I stopped to get a cup of English breakfast tea at a nice coffee shop in Washburn, Wisconsin. There was a sign where customers ordered that read, “I’ll have a caffe mocha vodka valium latte to go please.” It was a cheat sheet for those who were stumped as to what to order.

I saw a barbecue grill in a yard in Kansas City that was big enough to roast an entire Angus. It was likely a kale-free home. The owner of the grill, who probably had emotional ties to it and could pick a fight in the salad bar, would be able to go to Costco and buy a bison for barbecuing. I expect he’ll construct a one-grill garage to house the unit. To own a grill of such a prodigious size required a certain amount of optimism.

I’m an optimistic fellow. Long ago, I found myself in a bowling alley for the first time in many years. As soon as I picked up a ball, I knew I had a great career ahead of me. That’s because I was standing behind pro bowling superstar, Dick Weber. He was my opponent in a charitable event. I thought I’d mop up the alley with him. Then I remembered that I didn’t really know how to bowl. I bowled a 141 game and was crushed by Mr. Weber, who I think got that score in his first frame. He was the most congenial of winners.

Nature notes

I saw a barred owl on a bridge railing along a rural road. A kestrel fed on a vole as the tiny falcon perched on a utility wire. Three deer ran into St. Aidan’s Cemetery. I tend to use cemetery and graveyard interchangeably, but to be precise, a cemetery is a burial place for the dead that is usually located far from the church, while a graveyard is a burial place located near or beside the church or churchyard. Lilacs are common near graves.

  Edward Bunyard said that lilacs were “the very heart and soul of memory.” Louise Beebe Wilder said, “My foolish heart clings to the old fashioned single purple and white, for no flower seems to me to so truly express the fullness of spring.” Lilacs smell like spring.

Meeting adjourned

“Our preacher Veronica said recently that this is life’s nature: that lives and hearts get broken — those of people we love, those of people we’ll never meet. She said that the world sometimes feels like the waiting room of the emergency ward and that and that we who are more or less OK for now need to take the tenderest possible care of the more wounded people in the waiting room, until the healer comes. You sit with people, she said, you bring them juice and graham crackers.” — Anne Lamott