"Charlene Meyer celebrated
a birthday," Ivan reported. "I've never really known just how to pronounce Charlene's name. Those people over south of Athol say "Char"-lene. The rest of the county calls her "Shar"-lene. But she is such a nice person that she answers to either one."
"I want you to remember," Ivan said, "I didn't say this, a guy I was talking to said this. I asked one of the local yokels if he went to the basketball game last Monday night. He said, 'Hell, no. I don't go to girls basketball games.' He said, 'Girls ain't built to play basketball. Ya ever notice their hands. Little narrow things built to peel potatoes and fry mush. Not built to wrap around a basketball.' Then he went on, 'People think we won Duby Duby Two. We didn't. Rose the Riveter did. Got women out of the bedroom and the kitchen and put em in defense plants, and they ain't never come back.' He continued, 'It used to be a door-to-door salesman could make a living going door to door selling paring knives to housewives. A man would starve to death trying to sell door to door nowadays. Ain't no women at home. All out working.' Then he started coughin, and he would cough and he would hack, then he would cough and then he would hack. Finally I said, 'You got a cold.' He said, 'I've caught a helluva cold.' I said, 'What you doing about it?' He said, 'I'm going home and gaggle some Lister-by god-rene.' I hope to visit with him again sometime. But it won't be at the half-time of a girls basketball game."
"The only people who like snow," Ivan said, "are poets who can sit in the house, look out the window, and write about how beautiful it is."
"The heater fan on my car quit running," Ivan reported. "Couldn't get the frost off my windshield. Scratched er off with a scraper. Got in the car and about froze when I drove to town. My teeth were chattering and I had goose bumps on my cold hide. When I went over the railroad tracks, the heater fan started working."
"John McDowell bought the coffee for the As the Bladder Fills Club last Wednesday morning," Ivan said. "It took a while for us to figger who had bought the coffee. When we started to pay, Kate, the waitress, said 'That gentleman who was sitting there bought the coffee.' It took us a while to come up with John McDowell as the buyer. A brief poll showed that none of us had ever heard of him referred to in that manner before."
"One man," Ivan reported, "said to the other man, 'Your hair is getting thin on top.' 'So what,' said the second fellow, 'who wants fat hair.'"
"Gene Conaway might look like a grizzled old farmer," Ivan said, "but he does have a soft heart beating in his farmer's breast. Last Friday morning, we were sitting in Paul's Cafe and Gene said he had to go up to Orchelin's when they opened up. He said he had to go get a heating pad for his cats. He has a momma cat and a kitten. And he thought they needed some warmth when they came in from the cold."
"Bruce Miles as complaining about his Maratta slippin and a-slidin on the city streets," Ivan said. "We all sympathized with him, all that is but Jack Benn. Jack's observation was not sympathetic at all. Jack's comment was, 'Hell, that thing don't have any more traction than a wheelbarrow.'"
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