A friend told me that old Herter’s mail order catalogs are selling for $30 to $40 each on eBay. Herter’s was a purveyor of outdoor equipment, headquartered in Waseca. George Herter, the founder, wrote such things as, “How to kill a wild boar with a shirt,” “Being eaten alive by hyenas is less painful than you would think,” and “The person who named the muskrat should forever be ashamed of himself.”

In 1937, George took his father’s dry goods business and turned it into his own mail order outdoor goods juggernaut. Brown Printing churned out as many 500,000 copies of the Herter’s catalog per run. We received the publication in our mailbox. My friends and family regularly visited the company’s store to see unique items like the fish call. It was a sealed can painted to resemble a lure. You dropped it in the water and pulled a string that rattled the contents. It was both world famous and guaranteed to attract fish. Most of Herter’s products we’re labeled “world famous.” Even the small round stones sold as ancient hunting weapons.

There are men who are upset that their mothers threw out their baseball card collections. Now there are more perturbed men because their mothers tossed their Herter’s catalogs.

Such horrendous acts are why men seldom giggle when they get older.

Another reason is because we smash the occasional finger. Sometimes we cut fingers or have a finger broken when someone punches us in the nose. But many of us specialize in smashing fingers. A friend of mine showed me the results of getting his finger involved with a hydraulic log splitter. Stupid splitter couldn’t tell the difference between a finger and a log.

He had a story.

Mine wasn’t quite so scary or manly.

My wife and I were leaving to visit a great friend and former neighbor, Betty Miller, who resides in a hospice. We are privileged to know Betty.

I did something akin to hitting my finger with a hammer — a large, angry, bloodthirsty hammer. I shut my forefinger in a car door. I’m dumber at some times than at other times and this wasn’t one of the other times. I know what you’re thinking. What kind of a doofus shuts his own finger in a car door? I can explain. It was my wife’s car.

It takes a bit of athleticism to accomplish such a feat. You have to be quick to slam a door before your own index finger gets out of the way.

My digit bled profusely and turned a number of interesting colors, none of which matched the color of a flesh-colored crayon.

Oh, the humanity!

Songwriters have made millions out of such adversity.

It made me want to take off my socks and kick them around the house.

I said, “Ouch!”

I have a limited vocabulary in the injury-suffered arena. My mother got out a bar of soap whenever I tried to develop appropriate words.

I might have said only “Ow!” just as a Minnesotan says “Uff!” when too tired to say “Uffda!”

Fortunately, my wife was there to provide first aid. First she said, “You need stitches.”

“I don’t need no stinkin’ stitches,” I might have said.

Cold water and a box of adhesive bandages, and we were on the road. The smashed finger delayed us only slightly.

I realized that the wound was slight, just as I realize that each day produces another chink in my armor. My penmanship suffered. I didn’t think it could get any worse.

I’ve had a finger shut in a car door before. It was back in the era when each car door was a scrap metal drive in itself. So I knew better than to do that, but I must have forgotten or had a brain cramp. My mind may have been vacationing at an inattentive resort. No matter, I’m considering it another step on the path to enlightenment.

I discovered that the forefinger is connected to the brain bone. For a couple of days after the incident, when anyone asked me how old I was, I told them I was a year younger than I really was. And whenever I went into the garage, I sneezed three times.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote, “Though much is taken, much abides.”

He should have been talking about taxes, but it’s a line worth remembering.

A day can be a series of self-inflicted wounds, but most of me is somewhat OK.

At least no one has to cut up my food for me.

 

Hartland resident Al Batt’s columns appear every Wednesday and Sunday.