It was a day as bright and shiny as the seat of a bus driver’s pants.

I’d just enjoyed two bowls of empty-the-pantry stew that gave me the energy to do what needed to be done.

I’d rounded up loose change from behind sofa cushions and under car seats. I’d gone to the recycling center and sold every aluminum can I found in the ditch.

It was time to purchase some new business cards.

I worked with a wonderful cartoonist for many years. His name was Chon Day.

Chon was a nice guy. About as nice as a human can be. His cartoon series Brother Sebastian ran for years in the magazine Look, he was the longest-running cartoonist in The Saturday Evening Post, and he was a regular at The New Yorker. It was a delight and an honor to collaborate with him.

Chon gave me his card. It was a plain white card that had “My card” and nothing else printed on it.

I liked it. It made me laugh, but it didn’t have much usefulness other than that. Making me laugh was enough.

A business card is a handy thing to have even if your only business is monkey business. We use cards for the madness of work. We use them to cultivate a gift, turning an avocation into a vocation. A good business card is like a helium-filled balloon bumping against the ceiling. It’s a miniature billboard that greets others regularly.

A business card might do nothing more than let everyone know your address in Roundhere, Minnesota. A business card is a way to network. To meet people. It could make businesses move down a smoother path, like plowing around stumps or driving around potholes. Believe it or not, business cards are older than the Internet.

This petri dish called life teaches us things. We learn that most salted snack items are nothing more than flavored packing material in bags containing mostly air. And that having business cards are cheaper than having T-shirts made with contact information printed on them to hand out to others.

We could put accomplishments on the card. Brag a little. Put sprinkles on every cone. A business card could be a truncated Christmas letter. We could invent initials to follow our names.

You could confess things. Admit that the funny smell in chemistry lab was you. That you get a different answer every time you count your fingers.

To the hoi polloi, the masses of people, ordinary folk, the Plain Janes and Joe Sixpacks of the world who live life in the slow lane, the world can be mundane, sometimes cruel, but always filled with wonder.

On a mundane Monday, I fall into the old Lutheran trick of praying while pretending to sleep. And I hand out business cards. Some people collect business cards. Some collect them in a wastebasket. I threaten to add levity to the card in the hopes of prolonging its life.

This card entitles the presenter to $4 off a lutefisk pizza.

I know where my pancreas is. Where’s yours?

All those who believe in telekinesis, raise my hand.

My neighbor, Old Man McGinty, the youngest Old Man McGinty ever, has a business card. It reads, “Old Man McGinty. The youngest Old Man McGinty ever,” on one side and “Whatever” on the other.

Old Man McGinty, the youngest Old Man McGinty ever, studies the signs. He pays attention to the winds, the clouds, animal fur, bird feathers, the height of hornet nests, the color of a turkey’s drumstick, the thickness of cornhusks, and acorn crops. He throws in some historical records. From this giant vat of information and misinformation, he is able to forecast winters. I ran into Old Man McGinty, the youngest Old Man McGinty ever, recently. I asked him, “What’s your prediction for the upcoming winter?”

He paused. I could hear the wisdom working.

“You don’t want to know.”

He always says that in the hopes I’d pay him. That wasn’t going to happen.

“Come on, what will the winter be like?” I asked again.

“Cold.”

Cold is good. It’s bad when Old Man McGinty, the youngest Old Man McGinty ever, tells me that it’s going to be colder than the south end of a northbound well digger.

Business cards should be informative.

My business cards are simple. White with black printing. Name, contact information, and the image of a bat on one side and “Winter will be cold” on the other.

 

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