Growing up to be good, nervous men

ECHOES FROM THE LOAFERS’ CLUB MEETING

  I don’t drive on roads that are under construction.

  Where do you go?

  Nowhere.

 

DRIVING BY BRUCE’S DRIVE

  I have a wonderful neighbor named Bruce. Whenever I pass his drive, thoughts occur to me. We had a fellow in the neighborhood who had a lot of dogs on his farm. When I say a lot, I mean more multitudes than I could count with a slide rule. There were no Chihuahuas in the pack. The gargantuan canines probably ate them. That was a farmyard where a stranger was once heard to say, “Why is the rain falling only on my leg?” The owner of the dogs was a good guy, and I liked him, but one rite of passage for boys in the community was to ride a bicycle past the drive where all those snarling, aggressive dogs lived. The central part of that rite of passage was to live through that passage. That was an exceedingly important part. We rode like the wind. The dogs might have eaten a bicycle or two, but collateral damage was to be expected. Thanks to participating in high-speed chases involving vicious dogs, we grew up to be good but nervous men.

 

  I’d recently come out of major surgery at a major hospital. Minor surgery is what someone else has. It was time for me to order something to eat. I ordered ginger ale and saltine crackers. I think of ginger ale as ginger ail, and its combination with saltine crackers was the family health plan while I was growing up. There was no deductible required. When I felt poorly or looked peaked, my mother prescribed ginger ail and saltines. My mother could detect a peaked look at 100 paces.

 

I’VE LEARNED

  I’ve enjoyed visits to the Harkin Store, located in what was once the town of West Newton, about 9 miles from New Ulm. It began in 1870 and closed in 1901. You could get a pinch of chewing tobacco for a penny in 1870. That price must have gotten too high by 1901.

 

  DIY is an abbreviation for Destroy It Yourself.

 

  Heated seats are rear defrosters.

 

  Enjoy your knees and hips while they’re young.

 

BAD JOKES DEPARTMENT

The CEO of IKEA was elected prime minister in Sweden. He should have his cabinet together in a couple of weeks.

 

  Scientists have grown human vocal cords in a petri dish. The results speak for themselves.

 

  Last night, I yanked out a couple of nose hairs to see if that hurt. Judging by how fast my wife woke up screaming. I'm guessing the answer is “Yes.”

 

  My cousin’s wife said he had no sense of direction. So he packed his things and right.

 

NATURE NOTES

   It’s difficult to keep an opinionated blue jay a secret. Blue jays have an impressive vocal repertoire, and they’re not afraid to use it. Jays are excellent mimics that impersonate red-tailed, red-shouldered and broad-winged hawk calls. I heard one doing a broad-winged. Why? The jay might have been alerting other birds of a hawk’s presence, or it was trying to trick other birds into thinking that a hawk was nearby, which allowed the jay access to a feeder that lacked a crowd. Or maybe it made the call just because it could.

 

  Great horned owl fledglings scream in the darkness. That’s not dipping into a reservoir of charm. They aren’t screaming for ice cream, but they are screaming for food. They want their parents to feed them. Mortality is high for the immature owls trying to find their place on the planet.

 

  Orb web spiders regularly take down and eat their webs to recycle the silk proteins. As I admired a web’s engineering, a dried raspberry cane snagged my pant leg and held on for dear life. “The Giving Tree“ is a lovely book by Shel Silverstein that teaches generosity and unselfishness. It’s a story of a tree willing to do anything for the boy it loved. Maybe I’d encountered “The Giving Raspberry Cane.” Later, I ran into “The Giving Burdock,” which generously endowed me with its Velcro-like burs.

 

  Grasshoppers have short antennae, auditory organs (tympanal organs) on their abdomens and call (stridulate) by rubbing their hind legs against their forewings. Crickets and katydids have long antennae, auditory organs on their forelegs and stridulate by rubbing their forewings together.

 

  Mourning cloak butterflies fly early in the spring while there’s still snow on the ground. They hibernate through the winter as adults, under bark or in other small crevices.

 

MEETING ADJOURNED

  “There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.”—Leo Tolstoy. Be kind.