Minnesota's 14,444 lakes

ECHOES FROM THE LOAFERS’ CLUB MEETING

My sister is a librarian. She hit me with a grammar book.

Did you get a concussion?

No, but I was in a comma for a week.

 

DRIVING BY BRUCE’S DRIVE

I have a wonderful neighbor named Bruce. Whenever I pass his drive, thoughts occur to me. We’d been dodging weather for a month. The temperature had been in the three-dog-night realm, which refers to a night so cold you needed to sleep with three dogs to keep warm. That converts to a 29-dog night if you had Chihuahuas.

 

  We talked about baking bread and making lefse at an exercise class. I don’t eat breakfast before the workout. The talk of food made me hungry. Remember Euell Gibbons? He became nationally famous back in the mid-70s while promoting Grape-Nuts cereal with his quote, “Ever eat a pine tree? Many parts are edible.” No pine tree was safe until I had a bowl of oatmeal.

 

ROUNDBALL REPORT

I attended a high school basketball game. While the national anthem played, I held my hand over my heart and faced the flag. When "The Star-Spangled Banner" ended, I remembered Catherine O'Hara, the talented actress from "Beetlejuice" and "Home Alone," who had recently died. She had dextrocardia with situs inversus, a condition in which the heart and other major internal organs are reversed from their normal positions. If she’d put her hand over her heart, she’d have gotten odd looks in the gym.

 

I played basketball for the Cardinals. After a victory, the bus filled with song, “We are the Cardinals; mighty, mighty Cardinals. Everywhere we go, people want to know who we are. So, we tell them. We are the Cardinals; mighty, mighty Cardinals.”

 

My parents moved here from Iowa. If they’d have purchased a farm near Mallard, Iowa, our bus would have been alive with this song: "Black and gold, gold and black, Mallard Ducks go quack, quack, quack."

 

SNIPPETS OF CONVERSATIONS

The man introduced me to his dog, who shared his first name. I asked the man why. He said, “Because it’s easy to remember.”

 

My wife told me one of her cousins was in a better place. I told her I was sorry to hear that. “Why?” she said. “What’s wrong with spending the winter in Arizona?”

 

I’VE LEARNED

When the cat lies in the sun in February, she will creep behind the stove in March.

 

A friend had a hip replaced. She is experiencing some discomfort. She needs hip balm.

 

I gave a eulogy recently and was reminded once again that it’s impossible for words to do a life justice.

 

It wasn’t Camelot, but it had a camel lot. Southdale Center in Edina was the first enclosed, climate-controlled shopping center in the country. When it opened in 1956, it had animal-themed parking lot signs to help people remember where they’d parked. One was a camel.

 

BAD JOKES DEPARTMENT

What do you call an empty jar of Cheese Whiz? Cheese was.

 

A truck filled with Worcestershire sauce and a truck hauling quinoa collided in front of a charcuterie shop. When asked by a reporter what had happened, a witness replied, "Well, it's hard to say."

 

I keep randomly shouting out “Broccoli!” and “Cauliflower!” I might have florets.

 

Which month has 28 days? All of them.

 

A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned by a man with a glass eye named Larry.

 

NATURE NOTES

Politifact said Minnesota has 14,444 lakes of 10 acres or more. Ten acres is about seven-and-a-half football fields, including the end zones. The DNR says Minnesota has 11,842 lakes of 10+ acres. Mower, Olmsted, Pipestone and Rock Counties have no natural lakes. The 10 most common lake names are Mud, Long, Rice, Bass, Round, Horseshoe, Twin, Island, Johnson and Spring. The motto “10,000 Lakes” has been on license plates since 1950.

 

With Groundhog Day and Elvis singing, “You ain’t nothin’ but a groundhog,” why isn’t groundhog a popular team nickname? Why don’t we have the Woodbury Woodchucks, Grand Rapids Groundhogs or White Bear Lake Whistlepigs? There is the Punxsutawney High School (PA) Chucks, the St. John (ND) Woodchucks and the Wausau Woodchucks, a baseball team in the Northwoods League. The Princeton WhistlePigs were a baseball team in the Appalachian League based in Princeton (WV). Whistle-pig is another name for a groundhog.

 

The mosquito danger level was low as I walked on a blustery January day. A man asked me to identify scat along a trail. I told him it was a nincompoop.

 

MEETING ADJOURNED

  “Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.”—Franklin D. Roosevelt.