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Laughter

A lot of funny things can occur when 18 people spend 16 days together in close proximity.  Here are some of the best laughs I had.

     At the work site there was this pile of bricks in the muddle of the yard.  It was a rather unsightly pile, so, a few of the ladies decided to move it over behind the yard sheds out of sight.  Armed with a wheelbarrow they began carting bricks.  I watched them from my spot at the saw.  Not too far into the pile they ran into some interesting critters unlike anything we would find in North Dakota.  There was quite an assortment of snails, slugs, spiders, and some others that were unidentifiable without a critter book.  Understandably, the ladies had some angst about thrusting their hands into the pile to get out a brick with so much wildlife calling the pile their home.
     I ventured over to investigate.  The critter of the moment was a huge spider, bigger than any barn spider I had ever seen.  I took a stick and smashed it.  Immediately, hundreds of little baby spiders, freed from their mother's egg sac began darting around, hunting for a place to hide.  The ladies did not appreciate my help and I was banished back to my saw.
     Soon they went back to works and it wasn't long before the bricks were all stacked neatly behind the shed.


     During those long travel days, one can get pretty bored.  I had listened to a coupe books on CD.  I had done a dozen crossword puzzles.  On the last day as we entered Minnesota on Highway 2 at Duluth, I decided to get out the trivia cards.  This particular Trivial Pursuit game was called the Vintage Years, covering trivia from 1920 to 1960.  Each card has six questions on it.  The game became an effort for those of us in the front 2 or three seats in the van to get all six question on one card correct.
     I did not think this would be too hard, but it turned out to be quite a challenge.  Most of the time we would get only 3 or 4 out of the six.  On a rare occasion we got 5 out of six but never 6 out of six.  This went on steady from Duluth all the way to west of Bemidji.  We were so intent on this that I don't even remember going through Grand Rapids, where I was going to point out the Wizard of Oz. mural commemorating Grand Rapids as the birth place of Judy Garland.  Then we missed the Paul Bunyan statue at Bemidji.  Finally, after over two hours of trying we got all six questions on a card right so we could relax.
Here are the questions on that card:

  • What stately name did California scientists give the heaviest discovered element?
  • What boxing magazine did nat Fleischer first publish in 1922?
  • What city saw over 1000 Salvation Army bread liners storm two bakery trucks making hotel deliveries in March, 1930?
  • What aptly named thoroughbred's horseshoes were auctioned for War Bond pledges?
  • What gold rush was the setting for 1935's Call of the Wild?
  • Who castigated the medical profession with 1925's Arrowsmith?


     When wqe got to Rugby, we were an hour from home.  We stopped at the Cenex.  I grabbed myself a cup of coffee and approached the checkout counter to pay for it.  Mike was already at the counter.  He had two cups of coffee and a donut (I will not make a cop/donut comment here).  He sees me with my cup and says, "Brian, let me buy your coffee for you."  "Thanks Mike," I replied.  "That's nice of you."  I set my coffee on the counter next to his.
     Mike reached for his wallet.  The guy behind the counter looked at Mike's purchases and said,  "85 cents for the donut.  The coffee is free."  

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