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Echoes from the Loafers’ Club Meeting

I think I’ll have my class reunion at my place. I’ll provide all the food, valet parking and a place for everyone to spend the night.

Wow! That will be a great expense for you.

Naw, I was homeschooled.

Driving by Bruce’s drive

I have a wonderful neighbor named Bruce. Whenever I pass his drive, thoughts occur to me. I walked on a day when shivering counted as exercise and I took on the quixotic undertaking of shoveling snow, hoping the wind would let the snow stay where I put it. Another January day had passed without a single sighting of a polar bear in the neighborhood. Someone called the less-than-perfect weather disrespectful. The weather didn’t care. I needed to get to town. There was a merry throng waiting to ask me if it was cold enough for me.

Cornfield memories on a winter’s day

I walked through a cornfield years ago. I didn’t say anything. There were too many ears around. I watched the mail come to our mailbox. I wondered if Harvey Bell, our crackerjack rural carrier who brought us letters, bills and optimistic envelopes declaring I may already be a winner, had a life before he became our rural carrier, but the thought was pre-post-office-erous.

Going to town

I stopped at the grocery store with a piece of paper torn from a scratch pad from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital listing the items I needed to get. I like stores without self-checkouts. I watch shoppers using them, with many seeking second opinions. I paused in the cereal aisle to marvel at the variety and listened to the news a friend shared with me. I heard it through the Grape Nuts.

I hauled 325 books to the library bookstore. I counted them. My grandmother on my mother’s side was a teacher, and my grandfather built homes and furniture. One came to this country from Sweden, the other from Germany. Grandma had books galore. When she died, her daughters gave her books away willy-nilly. Later, they learned Grandma had saved emergency or mad money by using paper money as bookmarks. I checked all my books before giving them away and wasn’t surprised to learn no bills were acting as bookmarks.

A Kentucky cogitation

I recall tuning the dial until I heard the legendary Cawood Ledford call the Kentucky Wildcats basketball game while accompanied by the crackling of the AM radio prone to chronic static. Ledford began by saying, “Hello, everybody, this is Cawood Ledford,” and likely originated the now commonplace description that goes something like this: “The Wildcats will be moving left to right on your radio dial.” The radio was a magical thing filled with information and imagination. It caused me to want to visit the Bluegrass State. It was a Chamber of Commerce Day when I spoke at Kenlake State Resort Park in western Kentucky near the Land Between the Lakes, a 170,000-acre nature paradise. Its Kentucky Lake has the longest shoreline of any manmade lake in the eastern U.S. I enjoyed seeing the elk and bison prairie. Kentucky has the highest elk population of any state east of the Mississippi River, with 11,000 animals.

I’ve learned

The secret to dressing for winter is to come the closest to having too many layers without going over.

The book is better.

I have three unwritten rules. They are:

My brain has more room since I don’t have to remember any phone numbers.

That “yletulosba gnihton” spelled backward means absolutely nothing.

When it snows, we no longer grab a shovel. We grab the cellphone first and post photos of snow on social media.

Ask Al

“What is an example of a low-hanging fruit?” Watermelon.

“What’s the most influential song of all time?” The one played by ice cream trucks.

“Why do people like hot dogs so much?” Hot dogs don’t have legs, which makes them easy to catch.

“What is the element of surprise?” Oh!

Nature notes

I look at the natural world with wonder and I wonder what I’m looking at. I counted goldfinches, pine siskins and house finches at the feeders and hoped for redpolls and purple finches. Birding is a game of finches. I saw a few flocks of snow buntings on roadsides. Snow buntings have an overall white appearance. Dark-eyed juncos often migrate to the same area every winter and stay within 10 to 12 acres. There is a social hierarchy to the winter flocks. Male juncos are dominant over females, and adults are dominant over younger birds. Males tend to winter farther north than females.

Meeting adjourned

Being kind is the applause for others.