Echoes from the Loafers’ Club Meeting I got a postcard from my doctor. What did it say? He said he’d be right with me. Driving by Bruce’s drive I have a wonderful neighbor named Bruce. Whenever I pass his drive, thoughts occur to me. Everything was nearly copacetic. I’d asked my wife, my SEO (search engine optimization), for the shopping list I’d misplaced after writing a phone message on the back. She found it, and I found the store all by myself. A store clerk asked me if I’d found everything OK. I asked her to define OK. I’d found things I needed more than I wanted. As I had driven to town, I remembered riding along in a car and playing games to pass the miles. We’d put “butt” at the end of the names of businesses. We’d say, “I spy with my little eye—corn.” We drove around Iowa a lot. We played the game where my mother said things like, “Whatshisname? You know, that guy from that movie about the detective with a poor attitude that I think looks like your Uncle Vern.” We looked for out-of-state plates and improvised reasons for their appearance in the Gopher State. An Ohio plate meant the giant ice cream store in Cleveland had lost its power. It flooded the state with ice cream. Ohioans were fleeing, searching for a dry and unsticky land to begin new lives. Fun memories that digital devices and social media wouldn’t have made. From those thrilling days of yesteryear Bobbing for apples was a thing when I was a boy. I’d stick my face into a tub of water and try to catch apples floating in the water with my teeth. The apples were bigger than my big mouth. My nose filled with the water other noses and mouths had been in. Life gets small when you’re bobbing for apples, but not small enough. We should have been bobbing for crabapples. I ate pillowy Wonder Bread. It helped build strong bodies 12 ways. According to the Wonder Bread Cookbook, the 12 ways were muscles, bones and teeth, body cells, blood, appetite, growth, brain, energy, red cells, vitamin B12, protein digestion and tissue respiration. I don’t eat Wonder Bread today. I sometimes rode in a Pontiac while eating Wonder Bread. They no longer make Pontiacs. Thank goodness I still have lefse. Lefse is a meal in itself. I put butter on it and it’s bread. I put brown sugar and butter on it and it becomes dessert. And, of course, it can be used as a napkin. I’ve even put peanut butter and/or honey on it. My grandchildren dislike lefse so much they won’t even try it. They have no reason other than they know they wouldn’t like it. Halloween experiences Halloween offered some scary things. A phone call from an unknown number. A home with all its lights on (I’ve become my father). The 2.4 inches of snow that fell at my secret location in Minnesota. I met a pumpkin named Gourdon. I’ve learned The roof of my mouth is actually my mouth’s ceiling. Jim Simser, hall-of-fame football coach and good man, died recently. As I shook the hands of his sons and gave his sister Carolyn a hug filled with years and tears, I realized once again that I know the best people on earth. I threw a boomerang once that never came back. I live in constant fear. Bad jokes department Want to make a quick buck? Raise deer for racing. Who said, “Coming are British the. Coming are British the”? Paul Reverse. The world would be a butter place without margarine. Why did the pirate walk the plank? Because he didn’t have a dog. Why is dark spelled with a “k”? Because you can’t “c” in the dark. Nature notes There are about 225 owl species and about 50 possess feathered ear tufts (plumicorns). They aren’t used for hearing. The exact function is uncertain, but there are theories galore. They may be for camouflage, helping a roosting owl blend into a tree by breaking up the owl’s shape. They might make the owl look like a broken branch. The tufts could be used for communication with others of its species—courtship, recognition, display aggression or territorial behavior. Perhaps the presence of ear tufts gives an owl the look of a mammal and appear more menacing to mammalian predators. If the last were true, why wouldn’t all owls have plumicorns? It continues to amaze me that great horned owls begin nesting in January or February. Meeting adjourned Be kind and acknowledge another’s existence by asking, “How are you?” The post Al Batt: Passing the miles appeared first on Austin Daily Herald.