September warm

ECHOES FROM THE LOAFERS’ CLUB MEETING

Do you ever talk to yourself?

 

Yes, I do sometimes.

 

I wasn’t talking to you.

 

DRIVING BY BRUCE’S DRIVE

I have a wonderful neighbor named Bruce. Whenever I pass his drive, thoughts occur to me. After her funeral, Lori Bell rode to the cemetery in her husband Dan’s 1956 Dodge Sierra Wagon. It touched my heart.
 

September is the only month whose letter count in its name matches its numerical position in the year. “Fair on the first of September, fair the entire month." "September warm, winter warm." "As September, so the coming March.”

 

THE WAFFLE HOUSE

The heat was oppressive, but fall was in the air. It’s the smell of pumpkin spice. Someone said it wouldn’t be long before a frost. It’s way too soon for that kind of talk. A killing frost is a hard freeze when air temperatures drop to 28°F or lower for several hours, which ends the outdoor growing season.

 

Circumstances required me to turn down a gig in Hot Springs, Arkansas. I’d loved to have been there and regret not being able to meet people there. I know I’d have eaten at a Waffle House. Waffle House is famous for being open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

 

I was in a Waffle House for some nibbles in Louisiana. It was a day as hot as bathwater. I ordered a waffle and a glass of water, nothing more, nothing less.

 

The well-dressed fellow next to me was enjoying a waffle while reading a newspaper. A section of that paper escaped his grip and fell to the floor. He looked to the floor but had passed the age where he quickly made any nonessential movements.

 

I picked it up, surprised to see that it remained syrup-free. He thanked me.

 

We traded first names. I chided him good-naturedly about wearing a suit and tie on a steamy day.

 

He said he dressed up every day, and that he disliked wearing something he couldn’t be buried in. “Besides, people might think I’m someone important,” he said.

 

He’d grown up near the foothills of the Appalachians in Kentucky. He became a teacher but had hung up his school ID years ago. His wife had died. He swallowed tears after that disclosure. He moved to Louisiana to be near his son, lives in an apartment, and walks from a bus stop to the Waffle House twice a week. He likes waffles. Me, too. And we know the Waffle House will be open.

 

POWERFUL PIERRE

I almost visited France once. I’d received a lot of Pierre pressure. Pierre, South Dakota, was named after the prominent French American fur trader Pierre Chouteau Jr. Pierre, South Dakota, isn’t pronounced like the man’s name—Pee-air—but like the structure at the end of a dock. It’s an example of the Anglicization of foreign names.

 

I’VE LEARNED

The phrase "never odd or even" is a palindrome.

 

The preferred plural of the word octopus is octopuses.

 

The car salesman told me they stocked no new cars that had three pedals—gas, brake and clutch. In 1980, 35% of new vehicles had manual transmission. Less than 1% of new vehicles made for the U.S. market in 2025 had stick shifts. I taught my wife how to drive a manual transmission. She picked it up quickly, but I’ve retained a nervous tic under one eye.

 

NATURE NOTES

Curly dock stands 3 feet tall in the ditches. Its rust-brown seed stalks are hard to miss. Butterfly weed, a stunning hardy perennial with bright orange flowers that butterflies love, is there, too. Native Americans used it for healing lung ailments and wounds, earning it the name “pleurisy root.”

 

I watched a pod or a squadron of pelicans feeding. They were up to their bills in bullheads.

Swallows flew low over the lake. Because they eat as they go, swallows tend to migrate by day. Most songbirds migrate at night.

 

A gray catbird is euryphagous, meaning it eats a wide variety of foods. Catbirds yelled at me for picking raspberries; claiming ownership of the delectable fruit. Recently, I watched a catbird eat the berries of poison ivy. Mothers tell their children, “You eat like a bird.” Kids don’t, and they shouldn’t. Besides poison ivy berries, catbirds eat ants, beetles, crickets, grasshoppers, midges, caterpillars, moths, spiders and millipedes. They eat cherries, elderberries, strawberries, grapes and other berries. In his 1942 short story titled "The Catbird Seat," James Thurber featured a character who used the phrase, “In the catbird seat.” The legendary baseball broadcaster Red Barber made the expression famous, using it to mean sitting pretty, like a batter with three balls and no strikes on him. The catbird might have been sitting pretty on the poison ivy.

 

MEETING ADJOURNED

Be a nice person. The pendulum swings.