Weather Watch

Does anyone care to stick their neck out and make a weather prediction for this fall and winter? I readily admit that I never saw this heat wave coming that hit us the last few days. Still, it is summer time for the rest of this week and we might have a whole lot of heat units left to come before we get to old man winter. I hope so. I figure to get more golf in this fall, and maybe work on my problem areas. We just have to get more golfers to join the club, and that includes those who might be only fair or mediocre. Those are the guys I have a chance of beating.

While we’re on the subject of golf, word on the street has it that some hippy looking guy with long off-white hair and a loopy swing made a hole-in-one on hole number three at Dawson Creek. That sounds like a description of Tom Herges, and what do you know, it was good old Tom. There was even some speculation that Tom might pull off that rarest of doubles, namely making a hole-in-one and bowling a 300 game in the same week. Years ago, someone in Scotland did just that, and supposedly the feat made it into the pages of Sports Illustrated magazine. If Tom has done it, I didn’t hear about it, so I guess I’ll quit holding my breath.

Every Sunday when it is nice, Marianne and I drive our golf cart to church. We park on the grass and walk to the steps leading into the church. It’s kind of rough terrain so I always bring my fancy cane to help me over the lawn until I get to the sidewalk. As luck would have it, one Sunday I forgot my cane until we pulled up to the church, and it was almost service time. Going back home to get it would likely have made me late. What to do? I decided to look in my golf bag, and there I found an old 7 iron that would serve as a cane for just this one time. It was actually quite stylish albeit a little unusual to see a golf club in church. As a side note, the introduction to religion has done little to improve old # 7’s performance on the golf course.

Malachi Resner is the minister’s son, and I think he has inherited his Dad’s sense of humor. He knows about the onion forecast, and for my birthday, he gave me a weather rock. It is hilarious, and after I display it for a while in our church, I’ll see if the school library might have room some place to show it for a little while. Here is a small sample of what Ken’s Weather Rock will tell you: If it is Wet...Raining, White...Snow, and Gone….Tornado. There is more so watch for the rock appearing in a library near you.

There are times when I wish I weren’t so lazy. I would like to examine a field of corn along the Jim River where they started cutting silage. The corn is as thick as the hair on a dog’s back, but I don’t think there is an ear in the whole field. I might be wrong and there may be some real good corn. I would have to walk a quarter mile or so to find out and here is where the lazy part comes in. Anyway, the harvest is underway, and soon we’ll know how well the good Lord blessed us once again.

My office chair is comfy and good for a long session of book work or typing or whatever, but the darn thing ‘talks’ to me all day and all night. It groans and whistles, and I think it can communicate in more than one language. It has gotten to where I try to move as little as possible when I’m using it just so it will shut up. That doesn’t work very well so the next step is some WD-40. (The sound of footsteps leaving and then approaching once again.) Here I am again, this time with the WD-40. Turning the chair upside down and trying to squirt penetrating oil on every part that may or may not move is like wrestling an 80 pound pig into a tuxedo. We are upright once again and we must have done some good, as things are a lot quieter.

The transition into fall takes place this weekend and it will feel like it, as things cool down from midweek on into early next week. We might have showers over the weekend, but that will not dampen our spirits as we work on the fund raiser for Andy Diede. Andy is a good guy, a good friend and a good golfer with medical problems.