It must be Monday. My fingers are about two steps behind my brain while I’m working this keyboard. Perhaps if I drink a second cup of Folger’s coffee, I will get things coordinated. In the meantime, I was quite impressed by my grandkids. They remembered that awful joke about the man with a rubber toe who was named Roberto, so I know they’ll love this one even more. What was the man’s name who had no car? Carlos. And then there is the story of the guy in a wheel chair who shoplifted a camouflage jacket. The store owner ran an ad in the paper that said, “You can hide, but you can’t run!”

What a struggle this harvest season has been. We’ve had to make a trip to Sioux Falls almost every week this fall, and we usually go through Parker. Their elevator has a large grain storage facility on some flat ground west of the town, and most years, they have if full in almost no time. This year has been different, and I had my doubts about whether or not they would have it full by Thanksgiving. Not to worry. I checked it out last Sunday, and they had three huge piles all covered and ready for winter, and I’ll bet there is enough crop out in the fields so they can fill a fourth one if they want to.

You may wonder what I was doing in Parker on a Sunday. We were on our way to Sioux Falls to enjoy our granddaughter performing in the South Dakota Symphony Youth Orchestra. This was a new one on me and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was like a hundred thirty or so high school kids playing together, and they were good. They had fiddles and Maddy on trumpet and more fiddles or as some would call them, violins. Come to think of it, if they had had more fiddle music, I might not have dozed off at one point and dropped my cane onto the floor. I’ll tell you what; you listen to some soft, soothing music after a long day of watching foot ball and see if you don’t get sleepy.

Ah yes, Thanksgiving is here at last. As you know by now, it tops the list of my favorite holidays, mainly because there is so little work involved on my part. Whether it’s the celebration at City Hall in Scotland or dinner at one of the kid’s houses, I find that if I seat myself at an empty spot at the table, sooner or later, a plate piled high with delicious food magically appears in front of me. And almost as wonderful, the dirty dishes magically disappear. There are a lot of other things to be thankful for of course, but the abundance of good food in our great nation is no small thing.

Our church is part of a dual parish, so we have our Thanksgiving service on Wednesday night, and that works out well. If you can’t make it to church on Thursday, check out St. Paul’s service on Wednesday evening at 7 PM. You would be welcome.

There was an historic occasion in Nebraska last Saturday night. There was karaoke at the Ohiyea casino west of Niobrara and Marianne drove me down there. Marianne sings great harmony, but she never sings in public. This time she agreed to join me in singing a song. We practiced a Dolly Parton/Porter Waggoner song entitled ‘Just Someone I Used to Know’. When our turn on stage came, they could not locate that song among the thousands of titles they had. We had to sing a Johnny Cash song, ‘Daddy Sang Bass and Mama Sang Tenor’. Marianne was great, and the beauty part is, I’ll bet she’ll sing that other song with me another place, another time.

There were some good singers in Nebraska, including a couple who were celebrating their 52nd wedding anniversary. The man got up on stage and said, “This song is for my lovely bride. It’s one of her all time favorites.” He then proceeded to sing one of the saddest songs about a broken home that I have ever heard. Well, maybe when he is married 53 years like Marianne and me, his wife will sing with him, and it will be a happy song like ‘You are my Sunshine’. (Spoiler alert; that’s also a sad song.)

More and more fields have been harvested, and more progress will come this week. I get a feeling that if Thanksgiving is nice, there will be work done on that day. It does look like the week ahead will be fair to middling for harvesting, with maybe some flurries on Friday or Saturday.