"Was out of town last week for a few days,"
Ivan wrote. "Went to one of my favorite places in the whole wide world. The Barnes & Noble Bookstore in Rochester, Minn. Don't go there if you have literary diabetes. That place can elevate your literary blood sugar to lofty levels. I was relieved to find that, when I returned, Smith Center hadn't changed a bit. The Main Stree still ran north-south and the railroad still ran east-west. Bill Grimes and Claude Gripp were still Republicans and the Smith Center High School football team was still winning games. Kind of a comforting feeling to find that the status had remained quo. But I did hear one sad thing while I was gone - the Pillsbury Dough Boy had died of a yeast infection and the services were at 350 for 20 minutes."
"Doctors have made great strides - in vocabulary," Ivan said. "They used to do operations and you had pain. Now they do 'procedures' and you have 'discomfort.'"
"The Weltmer boys got to cutting some short ensilage one day last week," Ivan reported. "The pollen was floating in the air. Mike Weltmer grabbed a face mask. After two or three rounds he said to his son, Phil, 'this mask don't seem to be doing much good.' Phil, who took agriculture at Kansas State, said: 'You got to put a filter in em.'"
"Joanna Runyon said she didn't play with the Nazarene Church softball team," Ivan noted. "Joanna said she couldn't run, she couldn't throw, she was awkward, uncoordinated, and she couldn't hit the ball. Sounds like she is about ready to sign a K.C. Royals contract."
"Got a cantaloupe from Claude Gripp one day last week," Ivan said. "It was a good un. A fellow can't have too many cataloupe or vine-ripened tomatoes in his lifetime."
"When I think of the cheer leaders we had when I was in high school." Ivan said. "They had collottees or whatever you call em, that hung clear down below their knees. What those collottees, or what ever you call em, were was a split skirt that didn't reveal nothin. If fact we didn't even know girls had legs above their knees. But Smith Center still won [its football games] even under those austere conditions."
Ivan is just hilarious.
The doctor vocabulary wisecrack had me grinning.
Posted by: elck | September 21, 2004 at 08:43 AM
Hi, Elck--Ivan is a jewel, I'll agree. You wonder if Smith Center appreciates him? I know the boys in the As the Bladder Fills Club give him a good bit of ribbing (and he gives it back). And you remember he said: "If I don't get a sign out at the highway that says Birthplace of Ivan Burgess my life will have been a waste."
Posted by: Tom Montag | September 21, 2004 at 08:03 PM