Old age is a thing

ECHOES FROM THE LOAFERS’ CLUB MEETING

The traffic was terrible this morning. It was backed up for miles, and every driver was honking a horn.

 

What caused that?

 

I couldn’t tell. They were all behind me.

 

DRIVING BY BRUCE’S DRIVE

I have a wonderful neighbor named Bruce. Whenever I pass his drive, thoughts occur to me. It’s the beginning of the heated car seat season. As farm equipment rushed around to counteract its fear of rusting, I recalled speaking at a thing in McAllen, Texas. Lyle “Rocky” Bergner, a former teacher, coach and ex-Marine, was wintering in the Lower Rio Grande Valley due to his fear of rusting, and told me he’d planned to attend my talk. That was until he learned the tickets were $150 each. He told me he’d heard enough from me when he’d taught and coached me.

 

My family had an outhouse. We were recyclers before we knew recycling was a thing. Sears, Monkey Wards, Penney’s and Herter’s catalogs found a second use as toilet paper. Using catalogs wasn’t without peril. I still get nervous when I walk past a box of staples in an office supply store.

 

I’VE LEARNED

I was in Florida on a hot, nervous day. I could tell by the trees. Sweaty palms.

 

During a recent surgery, I did all my own stunts.

 

I talked to Nancy and Linda, and we bemoaned the lack of young girls named Nancy and Linda. There aren’t many little boys named Al, either. Parents fear they’d become known as Artificial Intelligence (AI).

 

A MarketBeat survey (https://www.marketbeat.com/originals/which-national-chains-do-people-wis...) found that what Minnesotans most wanted to see in the Gopher State was an In-N-Out Burger. The second most desired brand was Bojangles, followed by a desire to bring an H-E-B grocery store to Minnesota. Iowans would most like Shake Shack to open in their state.

 

My fear of tsunamis comes in waves.

 

Muffins spelled backward is what we do when they come out of the oven.

 

When you open the fridge and no light escapes, it’s time to clean it.

 

Interested is interesting.

 

BAD JOKES DEPARTMENT

If I die before you, I want you to marry Rupert.

 

What? I thought you hated Rupert?

 

I do.

 

“Which tomato smells the most?” A Roma.

 

Old age is a thing. Last night. I was in bed for 20 minutes when I heard the pizza guy cough. Then I remembered I’d gone into my bedroom to get my wallet.

 

NATURE NOTES

The Grasshopper Plague occurred in 1873–1877, beginning when southwestern Minnesota farmers saw what looked like a snowstorm coming from the west. There was a roar of grasshopper wings. In 1876, grasshoppers destroyed 500,000 acres of wheat, oats, corn and barley in 40 counties. Scientists called them Rocky Mountain locusts. Farmers destroyed grasshopper eggs, beat grasshoppers with flails, dragged heavy ropes through their fields, plowed and burned fields, raised chickens to eat the grasshoppers, dug ditches they hoped grasshoppers couldn’t traverse and filled those ditches with coal tar and set them on fire, hoping the smoke might discourage them. Farmers made hopper dozers of sheet metal covered in coal tar or molasses, which they dragged through the fields. County governments made efforts to rid the state of grasshoppers, but were less prepared to help people experiencing poverty than were cities. The state provided small sums of state-funded relief but focused its efforts on encouraging charitable giving. Governor John S. Pillsbury didn’t call for state-funded relief for farmers, believing poverty was a fact of life and providing relief would make farmers dependent on the state. Pillsbury focused efforts on eradicating the grasshoppers, which included a bounty measure requiring every able-bodied man in affected counties to destroy grasshopper eggs one day a week for five straight weeks. In the summer of 1877, the grasshoppers left. An April snowstorm damaged their eggs, but many attributed the end of the plague to divine intervention since Pillsbury had proclaimed April 26 a day of prayer. The grasshopper plagues left a mark on Minnesota culture, inspiring fiction like Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “On the Banks of Plum Creek” and Ole Edvart Rølvaag’s “Giants in the Earth.” The Rocky Mountain locust species is evidently extinct, as the last recorded sighting of a live specimen was in 1902 in Canada.

 

Research from West Texas showed cattle prefer to graze where prairie dogs live, refuting persistent beliefs. Prairie dogs prevent larger plants from encroaching on grasslands by nibbling on woody shrubs, their constant digging aerates the soil, and their scat returns nutrients to the ground.

 

MEETING ADJOURNED

“The time is always right to do what is right.”—Martin Luther King, Jr. Be kind.