Echoes from the Loafers’ Club Meeting

Why so glum?

My wife is going on a three-day shopping trip.

So what’s the problem?

She’s taking me with her.

Driving by Bruce’s drive

I have a wonderful neighbor named Bruce. Whenever I pass his drive, thoughts occur to me, such as: I enjoy watching baseball. The leisurely pace of the game suits me. That’s part of its charm. I confess that I’m a chronic multitasker and baseball games allow opportunities for that. You can take a nap during a game. When the Washington Senators relocated to Minnesota in 1961, they became the Twins. I was a lad then, but I didn’t care for the name. I liked the Minnesota part, but the Twins? The Twins stood for Minneapolis and St. Paul. Two minor league teams, the Minneapolis Millers and the St. Paul Saints had been displaced by the Twins. The Twins played at Met Stadium, located in Bloomington. Their name is unique and no worse than other professional teams. It’s probably better than most. The familiar name suits them now. What was my choice for a team name? I based it on the excessive expectoration of baseball players. They were and are spitting fools. An insect that creates a white, frothy foam on plants is called a spittlebug. The Minnesota Spittlebugs. It has a ring to it.

A mouthful of everything but shoelaces

I was feeling as run out as a well-placed bunt. I’d looked everywhere, but I couldn’t find it. I’d searched for so long that I’d forgotten what I was looking for three times. The good news is that wherever it was when I was looking for it, it’s still there.

I decided to have something to eat. Maybe hunger was the cause of my inability to remember the location of whatever it was that I was trying to find. Off to a restaurant I went.

“Only one?” asked the headwaiter.

They are good at that. “Just one?” is another common greeting.

I wanted to say, “No, there are 29 more getting out of my car. We’re clowns.”

He likely wanted to say, “Be sure to check out our Loser Special.”

My meal came. The server waited until my mouth was full before asking, “How is everything?”

I wanted to tell her about my shoelace that had broken that morning. I couldn’t find any replacement shoelaces, so I needed to go shopping.

That’s what I wanted to say, but I couldn’t because my mouth was full. So I just nodded and gave her a thumps-up sign with my fork. Servers wait until a mouth is at full capacity before asking questions. That cuts down on complaints.

It was a fair day

There I was, standing and looking as if I were someone looking at chickens. Which is what I was doing. It’s a fine way to pass the time. I was peering at 4-H chickens at a county fair. They were Cochin hens. Big and friendly, they’ve inspired many people to get backyard chickens.

Another fellow was looking at the same poultry. He said he didn’t like chickens. I asked him why. He said that when he was a boy, he had to carry struggling roosters to his grandmother so she could turn them into Sunday dinners. He didn’t like chickens because those roosters insisted on pecking him when he carried them to slaughter. Go figure.

Nature notes

“Why do people call cicadas locusts?” Locusts are a type of grasshopper, while cicadas are more closely related to crickets. Early American colonists had never seen cicadas, but were familiar with the biblical story of locust plagues in Egypt and Palestine.  When cicadas appeared in large numbers, some early colonists thought a locust plague had descended upon them.

“Why are they called “seagulls” if they are here in Minnesota?” It’s a bit of a misnomer. The word “seagull” is an informal way that laymen refer to any species that belongs to the family Laridae (the gulls). There is no such thing as a seagull. Many species of gulls nest near coastal areas, some do not. The ring-billed gull is common here, but it spends only the winter on coastal beaches in the south. When spring comes, they congregate inland around humans. They frequent lakes, landfills, parking lots and plowed agricultural fields. Ring-billed gulls eat fish, insects, earthworms, rodents, grain, as well as french fries and other foods discarded by people.

Meeting adjourned

“My dad’s life story was a string of kindness. He treated everyone as an equal, whether it was the bank teller or the bank president. He even attributed his survival to the courage of kindness.”

— Daniel Lubetzky