Ivan addresses an Open Letter to the One O'Clock Golfers:
"What you should do is vote a new rule in. If you get in a sand trap, you'd have two options. You can go ahead and play it out of the sand trap or you can lay back out of the sand trap and county one stroke. The reason this should be done is because if you are a one o'clock golfer you haven't got a clue as to how to hit out of a sand trap. And why spoil a whole round by flailing away in the bottom of a sand pit? The rule would say 'you have to lay BACK,' so you would still have the sand trap in front of you, staring you right in the face. And if you hit in again you could lay back again, adding one stroke each time you laid back. I'm tellin' ya, it ought to be done. You don't know how to shoot out of a sand trap and you're too darned old to learn. But remember this rule does not say that you HAVE to lay back. If you want to hit from the trap, that is your prerogative."
"There's a feller here in town," Ivan said, "who doesn't have a hobby. Someone suggested that he take up fishing. He said, 'tried it once and didn't like it.' Someone else suggested he take up golf. He. He said, 'tried it once and didn't like it.' Another guy said he ought to take up gardening. He said, 'tried it once but didn't like it.' He and his wife have one child."
The Benn family was plucking and freezing 27 chickens one day last week," Ivan reported. "When they were getting ready, Arlene was getting the tools out and she dropped a knife. A sharp knife. When she caught it, she grabbed the blade. Cut the palm of her hand. Jack got out the first aid kit and pushed the cut together and taped it. Then Arlene slipped on a plastic glove and the assembly line never missed a beat. After the project was completed, Jack took Arlene to the doctor. The doc took five stitches to close the wound."
"I've done a lot of things in my life," Ivan said, "but swiping roasting ears is not one of them. Edie Drake and Frances Goakey were remembering when they used to go up in the Republican River valley and swipe roasting ears. Frances grew up over north of Athol in the Highland neighborhood. So it wasn't far up to the Nebraska cornfields. Frances said that some of the farmers up there used to call her the Kansas coon. That's a new one on me. I'd never heard that story."
"You drive around town in the evenings and you see outdoor grills in operation all over town," Ivan said. "It's a generation thing. In my generation, we cooked in the house and went to the bathroom outside. This generation cooks outside and goes to the bathroom in the house."
"Had an abrupt change of subject at Paul's Cafe last Friday morning," Ivan said. "The week had been spent in speculation about the condition of the wheat. But Friday morning cattle took over as the chief topic of conversation. Had a triangle of experts at the front table. Kendall Nichols was on the south side and the north side of the table was manned by Dennis Reinert and Dick Weltmer. It kinda reminded me of a basketball game. Reinert and Weltmer tried to double-team Nichols. But Nichols was on the offense at all times and was the clear-cut winner in the conversational contest. Meanwhile, at the round table, Stan Smith said he was busy all day the day before watching them tear down the house directly across the street from him. Stan said when the dozer hit the side of the house, the dust flew. That was a lot of 1930s' dust. Smith managed to get into the cattle conversation by telling about somebody fencing the land around the old Laud Hill place and was going to put some kind of exotic cattle in there. But I'll have to admit most of the conversation was about heifers and cows. Very little bull was slung."
"Having a town full of retired people is good news and bad news," Ivan said. "The bad news is: most of them are on fixed income. The good news is: most of them spend all of it."
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