"I knew there was something different about you, but I couldn't put my finger on it.''
Bill knows there are many things different about me, but in this case it had just dawned on him that I had new glasses. They are the first new ones in a couple decades, which is the result of stubbornness and an ingrained reluctance to replace the old with new. The old had deep scratches on the lens, a product of a misguided close-quarters mechanical repair effort.
"Don't you think they make him look more manly and intelligent?'' Kathy asked Bill.
Bill, perhaps fishing for an appropriate response from a man's perspective, agreed. I wasn't sure what she meant but didn't pursue a follow-up. I neither feel any more like the Incredible Hulk than before nor more intelligent. In fact, recent occurrences suggest the opposite. Her newly discovered Tarzan sensed that it would be good to mention that Kathy's sonic-boom snoring awakens him deep in the night. What followed was what always follows — a conversation poisoned with you-snore-louder-than-me emotion. I have taken to past-midnight retreats to the living room recliner, where I discovered that the dog sleeping on the couch also snores. As a bed, the recliner has certain limitations. A tosser-and-turner and elbow-thrower can get away with those things in a real bed.
The recliner tipped over and dumped me like a sad and sleepy sack of carbohydrate-rich potatoes. The dog's ear-splitting barks brought Kathy from the bedroom, and her icy words were made even more chill with the discovery of a mostly empty potato chip bag. A diabetic ought to make better midnight snack choices than that.
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"I'm going to tell your doctor,'' she said.
The doctor didn't need telling. His recommendation was weight loss gained by reducing carbohydrate consumption. Potatoes, which I have in abundance, are filled with carbs and so is pasta. Although the doctor agreed that red potatoes are lower in carbs than white, gluttonous consumption is best avoided.
The goal is to return to my high school weight, which is many metric numbers away.
"Go for more long walks,'' the doctor advised, "and get more exercise.''
Bill hadn't driven his beaten-up pickup over just to visit. He had hay down and needed someone to stack bales behind the baler. Each haymaker has their own stacking style, and an old farm boy never forgets how.
"Stack 'em five high,'' Bill said.
That meant 100 bales per wagon and tossing 60 pound to 70 pound bales over my head. A stacker had best do it right. Bales that tumble into roadside ditches on their way home weigh twice as much the second time around.
Dad always worried that my loads wouldn't make it to the barn door. Baling often put him in an ornery mood, which was only softened by stringy tobacco pulled from a Red Man Golden Blend packet. The nicotine's strength sent my head spinning, but I was determined to show that I could handle more than just the bales. Dad insisted that a stacker confident in his work would ride home on the top of the load; I seldom did so.
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Other father-son lessons involved the importance of keeping the water jug cool in the shade and that when it comes to field food, nothing was better than Mother's summer sausage sandwiches and morning-made strawberry shortcake.
The newly minted more manly man returned home from Bill's field feeling like a vim- and vigor-filled 20-year-old. He awakened safe in the recliner with retirement-age aches and pains, but satisfied with knowing that an old man can make himself young again for a few hours.
