The pumpkins were so fat, I called them plumpkins.

It was nearly fall. I drove with apples on my mind.

I hoped that the deer had been warned to look out for motorists. Mother Nature had used every crayon in the box, but the true fall colors were orange barrels.

I was trying to use up all the daylight I’d saved before I’d have to give it back on Nov. 1.

Ben Franklin, who penned the proverb “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise,” was a proponent of daylight-saving time. He wrote that adjusting the clocks in the spring was a good way to save on candles.

Daylight-saving time wasn’t adopted to benefit farmers. The lost hour of morning light meant they had to shift chores into high gear. Dairy farmers were particularly opposed as the cows adjusted poorly to schedule shifts. Daylight-saving time is meant to save energy, but there is some disagreement as to whether it does.

As I drove along, enjoying the extra hour of daylight, I came upon an extraordinary sight at the edge of a small town. Outdoor chairs of many colors covered large areas of grass as if they were enormous herds of zebras, wildebeests and gazelles grazing on the Serengeti.

I wondered if the business that had placed the furniture there had given any thought as to proper placement. Should the shortest be in front and the tallest in the back? Bright colors nearest the road?

I stopped. I sat in a glider that swiveled. It was made from recycled plastic milk jugs. It was nice. It was handy. I had a stone in my shoe. Life doesn’t rock when you have a stone in your shoe. I removed the stone. I high-fived myself. The fly in the ointment was that when I sat down I made a certain sound and when I got up from the chair, I made a similar sound.

I’m not alone in this. In a single day, one man makes enough grunts and groans to dub a film of an entire NFL game.

A man makes sounds when he takes off his shoes. When a restroom is located. When searching for a TV remote hidden behind the sofa cushions. When he opens a ketchup bottle, looks for a shirt in a closet, opens a kitchen drawer, watches televised sports, stands in line, yawns or garnishes his mashed potatoes. Each man sound is an indication of an epic struggle. Men created these obnoxious sounds long before cellphones corralled most of the obnoxious sounds market. If there were a CD of sounds that no one wanted to hear, man sounds would be on it, accompanied by the playing of an out-of-tune bagpipe.

My father made sounds when he sat down to read the newspaper. He sat in a large easy chair. It was cushiony, but most of the springs were long retired. He hadn’t been the first owner. Or the second. One evening, after he’d had a rough day filled with misbehaving cows, delinquent pigs, reluctant machinery and declining farm prices, he produced a prolonged sigh as he sat down. I laughed and made a comment. I was teasing. He growled back at me. Something about me being a wiseacre and just wait until I was his age. I thought I’d been more of a wisenheimer than a wiseacre, but it didn’t matter. At least I hadn’t been a smart aleck. Dad had told me that if I was going to be a smart aleck, I should make sure that I’d become smart first.

I took mock offense at his words. I said, “For two cents, I’d run away from home.”

It was the easiest two cents I’d ever made.

A man makes the same sounds over and over again. There are only so many scripts.

Men are given no choice in this matter. That’s why we tell the same jokes over and over. Ones like this. A butcher was 6 feet 2 inches tall, had black hair, a 38-inch waist, took a size 7 hat and wore size 12 shoes. What did he weigh?

Meat.

A man gets to a certain age and he becomes like a doorbell salesman joining a choir, he chimes in.

And he becomes a bad, one-man band.

 

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