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Echoes from the

Loafers’ Club Meeting

I sent my brother a “get better” card.

I’m sorry to hear he’s ailing.

Oh, he isn’t sick, but I know he could get better.

Driving by Bruce’s drive

I have a wonderful neighbor named Bruce. Whenever I pass his drive, thoughts occur to me. I saw a pickup pulling a trailer containing five mattresses to the landfill. Sometimes, in the course of human events, a man has to take mattresses into his own hands.

It had rained cats and dogs. I know because I stepped into a poodle. I waited quietly in the dim shadows of a waiting room. I wondered how many people die in a waiting room each year. I’m sure it’s not as many as those who die in living rooms.

I had a green rental car in Texas. It was really green. I don’t know if I’d ever had a green one before. No one asked me what kind of rental car I was driving, but if they had, I’d have told them, “Green.”

A woman at the venue where I spoke told me that her husband sits around the house all day with no clothes on. “I tell him to put on some clothes, but he tells me to go slap flies. He says that as long as we’re not having any company, who cares? I ask him, ‘Then why are you wearing your cowboy hat?’ He replied, ‘Well, you never know.’”

I wish I’d have hugged my mother more

I’ll give my wife some macaroni art I’d made for Mother’s Day. She’ll be surprised.

My mother wasn’t vertically enhanced. I teased her that she was so short her feet could be seen on her driver’s license photo. I knew if I put my heart on the table, my mother would never step on it. She bragged about me. “Allen has always been smart. He was a toddler when he grabbed that electric fence. No one had to tell him to let go.” She nearly cried when I gave her a painted rock and some dandelions for Mother’s Day. I think it was because I had given her a painted rock and some dandelions for Mother’s Day. I’m proud to be Lucille’s boy. I wish I’d have hugged Mom more.

Bad jokes department

Are Madonna and Cher on a first-name basis?

What kind of coffee was served on the Titanic? Sanka.

Why do ducks have flat feet? To stomp out fires. Why do elephants have flat feet? To stomp out burning ducks.

If you get shingles a second time, is it a case of the doubles?

Have you heard about the man who regained his sight and lost his job as an NFL referee?

My cousin moved from Nacogdoches to LA because LA was easier to spell.

Who said, “Coming are British the”? Paul Reverse.

I’m friends with 25 letters of the alphabet. I don’t know ‘y.’

I’m slowly getting over my fear of speed bumps.

Nature notes

On an unseasonably seasonable day, critters act as cheerleaders. The white-throated sparrows whistled, “Old Sven Peterson, Peterson, Peterson” and chorus frogs sounded like a thumbnail running down the teeth of a comb.

A Cooper’s hawk hunted the yard. Birds flee or freeze in place when this happens. The first bird to return to the feeders when the coast is clear is almost always a chickadee.

I watched American white pelicans flying low enough that the nuptial tubercles on the upper mandibles of both males and females were exceptionally evident. Above them, a red-tailed hawk circled. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology says the pelican’s wingspan reaches 114 inches and the hawk’s stretches to only 52 inches. I love being astonished.

Chipping sparrows, brown thrashers and song sparrows kept me company as I looked at anthills in sidewalk cracks. I used to wonder while wandering what it’d be like to fall into an anthill. It would have been a tight fit, no doubt. I listened to Canada geese playing their vuvuzelas. I love this time of the year when the blue-winged teal bloom wherever there is a puddle, and the drakes entertain me with their enthusiastic peeping. The joy of being a birder is immeasurable.

I watched grackles and red-winged blackbirds mob a crow in the air, forcing the bigger bird to the ground. As the crowd dispersed, the crow flew into a spruce tree. Poor decision. The tree was filled with blackbirds, most of whom joined the fray and chased the crow from the scene.

Meeting adjourned

“Non nobis solum nati sumus.” (Not for ourselves alone are we born.)—Marcus Tullius Cicero. Be kind.