Echoes from the Loafers’ Club Meeting
I remember the time I, er, uh.
Did you forget what you were going to say?
No, I remembered that wasn’t me.
Driving by Bruce's drive
I have a wonderful neighbor named Bruce. Whenever I pass his drive, thoughts occur to me. There ain’t no shame in the weather, but I found it blistering hot. I realize this is a subjective assessment, but the temperature had the personality of a cat with a stepped-on tail.
I saw a bumper sticker that read, “Having weird parents builds character.”
A friend told me he’d given away his computer and his tablet. I asked him what he was doing with all the time he’d freed up. He told me he watched TV.
Staying ahead of the horses
Dibs is a controversial Chicago tradition wherein residents leave objects—tables, chairs and traffic cones—as placeholders in parking spaces they’ve shoveled out after a snowfall. I see placeholders, mostly chairs and blankets, on parade routes. I watched the Shriners in their little cars and worried it might turn into a demolition derby. The first rule of a parade is the horses go last.
Don’t forget to remember
I visited a neighbor lady named Beulah who spent years in a nursing home. I told my brother that I’d seen Beulah. He told me that was quite a trick because she’d been dead for years. I said no one had told her. He wasn’t the only one who thought Beulah had died. I stop at nursing homes often, even when I’m traveling. When I visit homes far from home, I ask to see someone who likes company but doesn’t get much. I listen to their stories and want them to know not everyone thinks they’re gone. As a kid, I was told I should make something of myself. I’m trying to be someone who listens to the stories of others.
Crop circles
There were crop circles when I was a kid. We called them soybeans. There was a giant one burned into a field near our farm. The people talking to my father about the crop circle suspected it was the shenanigans of a local farmer prone to shenanigans. But nobody knew for sure. And that was just fine.
The value of small things
There is a Mooers Avenue in Cokato, Shakopee and Nantucket Island. There should be one in Lafayette, Minnesota. Ruth Klossner holds the Guinness World Records title for the largest collection of cow-related items. She has an abundance (cornucowpia?) of toy cows in her home (the “Mooseum),” but only one bale of hay. Ruth says when they eat that, they’ll get more. She came to New Richland’s Farm & City Days to do a program for the New Richland Area Historical Society with 20,012 items in her collection. She left with 20,015. Ruth is the cow lady of Bernadotte. WCCO radio morning show hosts Boone and Erickson joked about Bernadotte International Airport east of Lafayette. Everybody has something on their walls. Ruth has more than most. One of them is a sign that says “Manure happens.” So does perpetual dusting.
Ask Al
“Did you grow up with the three-second or five-second rule for picking up fallen food?” I used the five-second rule as long as I blew on the food. I used a 10-second rule for sugar cookies because Mom‘s sugar cookies were that good.
Friends of the New Richland Public Library
Happiness is a book sale. I enjoyed visiting with you at the sale during Farm & City Days.
Nature notes
I’ve heard eastern cottontail rabbits described as artful dodgers. In winter, they feed on seeds, twigs, bark and tree seedlings. They practice coprophagy, eating their own vitamin-rich droppings. I know where a rabbit had been eating, as the plant suffers a 45-degree-angle cut. Deer tear away at vegetation. Rabbits love the tender shoots of various plants—crabgrass, sow thistle, dock, plantain, red clover, white clover and dandelion. Whether you consider them pretty, pesty or perky, dandelion plants can live 10 years and have wide-spreading roots that loosen hard-packed soil, aerate the earth and help reduce erosion. Taproots pull nutrients from deep in the soil and make them available to other plants. They’re used by pollinators. Goldfinches, song and chipping sparrows, indigo buntings and towhees eat the seeds. Rabbits, porcupines, ground squirrels, mice, groundhogs and prairie dogs eat the seeds, foliage and roots, while deer browse on dandelions.
One man’s garbage is a raccoon’s treasure. Raccoon kits are weaned in 2-3 months and remain with their mother for up to a year. "Ain't no thing like me except me!” said Rocket Raccoon in “Guardians of the Galaxy.”
Meeting adjourned
“Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness.”—Lucius Annaeus Seneca.