Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Echoes from the

Loafers’ Club Meeting

I love Worcestershire sauce.

What’s so good about it?

It’s hard to say.

Driving by Bruce’s drive

I have a wonderful neighbor named Bruce. Whenever I pass his drive, thoughts occur to me. The radio sang, “Everybody was Kung Fu fighting. Those cats were fast as lightning. In fact, it was a little bit frightening.” Farmers’ Almanac says the spring outlook for the Midwest is very cold and wet. That was more frightening.

I saw a road-killed raccoon. Its tail whipped around in a fierce wind. That’s where the wind goes. I thought of Fess Parker. Someone had sent me a video of 6’6” tall Fess Parker, who was featured in “Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier” on TV in 1955, which presented three episodes about the famous explorer, congressman and heroic figure from the Alamo. It was a colossal hit, and kids sported coonskin caps just like their hero. Later, still wearing buckskins and a coonskin cap, Parker starred in “Daniel Boone,” a highly rated TV series (1964-1970) set during the American Revolution. Buddy Ebsen played Georgie Russell, Davy Crockett’s loyal and humorous sidekick. Ebsen’s career continued to flourish in “The Beverly Hillbillies” and “Barnaby Jones.” Nathan Boone said that his father despised raccoon fur caps and didn’t wear one, wearing a wide-brimmed felt or beaver hat instead. There were comic books, bubble gum and a #1 hit song called “The Ballad of Davy Crockett.” Neither Crockett, Boone, Parker or Ebsen did any Kung Fu fighting.

Now U-turn

False rumors claim that my hometown is getting a stoplight, with a committee supposedly formed to select the colors. A woman made a U-turn on the highway and stopped at the gas station. She waved her cellphone about and said, “I can’t find Hartland on the map and I’m in it!”

Stoplights would have only confused her. When I was a new driver, a U-turn, either done legally or illegally, was called hanging a U-ie. A left turn was sometimes called a Louis (pronounced “Louie”) and a right turn was hanging a Ralph or a Ralphie.

I’ve learned

Whereas most birds have three to four toes on each foot, ostriches are unique in that they have only two.

Nearly all cigarette filters are made of plastic fibers. The plastic, cellulose acetate, degrades only under severe biological circumstances, such as when filters collect in sewage. Cigarette butts are the most commonly littered item.

I had the hiccups for three weeks. I found a way to cure them. Keep saying “pineapple” until they go away. It works, but it takes three weeks.

Ask Al

“How do you decide which breakfast cereal to buy?” I read the nutrition label and avoid any box that carries a funeral home advertisement.

“Why are the deceased’s arms crossed in a casket?” The practice of crossing arms in a casket is a tradition that dates back to ancient cultures that believed there would be waterslides in the afterlife.

“Who said, ‘The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach’?” An inept surgeon.

Nature notes

As quick as a hiccup, the birds glided into the conspicuous and vibrant red veins of spring, the red-osier dogwood. The many-stemmed shrub is a favorite nest site of goldfinches and is also called red twig dogwood, red willow and redstem dogwood. Red-osier dogwood has pliable stems used in wicker baskets and furniture. Why is a dogwood tree called a dogwood? The possible origins are many and varied. In the 1500s, the trees were known in Europe as the dagwood because the small stems were used for daggers, arrows or skewers. It might have been referred to as a dag or dagge in old English. It could have originated in colonial times because its fruit was edible but not fit for dogs. Another belief is that it’s called dogwood because a medicine concocted from its bark was used to treat dogs plagued with mange. Others suggest the name dogwood is a derivation of the word “daggerwood.” Daggerwood sticks were sharpened and used to skewer meat for cooking.

European starlings attacked the suet with a fierce hunger. They were introduced into the U.S., reaching southeastern Minnesota in 1929. Within a decade, they were distributed statewide.

T. S. Roberts first observed a flock of house sparrows in Minneapolis in 1876. A resident had a dozen sparrows brought from New York and released in a garden in 1875. By 1877, the house sparrow was established as a breeding bird in the Twin Cities.

Meeting adjourned

“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”—Edith Wharton.