Echoes from the Loafers’ Club meeting

“I think it’s nice the way you talk to your wife.”

“Thanks.”

“You always call her honey, dear, or sweetie.”

“To tell the truth, I’ve forgotten her name.”

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: Those who do not learn from history are doomed to hear “I told you so” forever.

I’ve learned

1. To look out for number one unless my neighbor has a big dog. Then I look out for number two.

2. When guessing someone’s age, it pays to be a bad guesser.

3. A credit card should be nothing but a magnetic strip on both sides so that it wouldn’t matter which way I put it into the card reader.

The cowboy way

He was the first real cowboy I’d met. I was a boy from Minnesota. He was a cowboy from North Platte, Neb. He looked like the Marlboro Man who chewed tobacco instead of smoking it.

I asked him to say hello to Roy Rogers for me.

He uttered a discouraging word.

A sports fan

Wes Crowe of Hartland said that his two favorite teams are whoever beats the Yankees and whoever beats the Packers.

The cruise

I was a tour leader on an Alaskan cruise. The cruise ship tilted under the weight of food. The best cabins overlooked the buffet table. A cruise is as good as a year of college. The “freshman 15” indicates, true or not, that the average collegian puts on 15 pounds during his or her first year of school. A friend who accompanied me on the cruise told me that the only souvenirs he brought back were five extra pounds.

Thrilling days of yesteryear

On a beautiful summer day of high skies and gentle breezes, the ball rolled onto a lawn beyond the softball field. The yard belonged to one of my teachers. I ventured onto the lawn to retrieve the softball. Even though school was out for the summer, my teacher tried to educate me.

“Stay off my lawn!”

Teachers are always teaching.

I forgot to remember

I was speaking at a conference at Gustavus Adolphus when a woman in the audience asked me if I knew someone — let’s call him Steve. I might know Steve, but I couldn’t remember him. I apologized and told the woman, “I know more people than I can remember.”

A bright world

I was working late at my desk. I considered the house dark except for the desk lamp illuminating my task. It wasn’t dark. Lights blinked from all rooms. Electronic devices hard at work or being recharged. I gazed out the window into a night that should have been as black as the inside of a pants pocket, but it wasn’t. Wind turbines, 397-feet tall, blinked in red.

My whole world blinks.

It’s not easy being a cat

The wind blew so hard that I carried rocks in my pockets to keep from blowing away. I struggled to get into the house. A dropping barometric pressure had released a land hurricane.

I came indoors. The two cats were sound asleep in a steaming pile of felinity. No wind worries for them. Being a cat must be tiring.

Memories of an election

No politician knocked on my door this year. None ever have aside from county commissioners. Candidates might not want my vote. I can understand that. Many of my fellow rural residents have had the same experience. We hear of all the door knocking candidates do but we don’t hear the knocking on the doors of our rural homes.

They likely forgot about us. They do that.