Al Batt, Tales from Exit 22

A large smudge was tormenting me.

I suspected it to be a noseprint put in place by my dog as she gazed out my office window.

I crumpled a newspaper, poured a little vinegar on it and set off to battle the spot.

I applied plenty of elbow grease attempting to clean my window onto the world. After much effort, I determined that the smudge was on the outside of the window.

All my hard work went for naught. I needed to go outside and begin my task anew.

I had no choice but to say, &8220;Uffda!&8221; What else could I do?

I am a member of the Hartland Loafers&8217; Club. We meet for an hour. We do nothing. We talk about how we could do even less. Then we go home and rest. At a recent meeting, I heard &8220;uffda&8221; uttered three times.

The first uffda came after someone related how much his cousin spent to have a new septic system installed.

The second uffda was voiced when a beautiful woman walked by. The group is old, not blind.

The third uffda was expressed after an Ole and Lena joke was told by one of the members. Each member of the Hartland Loafers&8217; Club was weaned on Ole and Lena jokes and has heard every Ole and Lena joke 1,429 times. Uffda sometimes passes as polite laughter.

Uffda is a word expressing exclamation. It could indicate surprise, disapproval, weariness, astonishment, unworthiness, resignation, exhaustion, dismay, compassion, defeat, joy or it could be used when no other word comes to mind. Uffda can mean oops, ouch, drat, phooey, ish or tempting. Uffda takes the place of a quiver full of swear words.

We say &8220;uffda&8221; when we love to eat lutefisk. We say &8220;uffda&8221; when we&8217;re forced to eat lutefisk. Someone says &8220;Gesundheit&8221; or &8220;God bless you&8221; when another sneezes. The sneezer says,

&8220;Uffda!&8221;

When I hit my crazy bone, an &8220;Uffda&8221; is an automatic.

Some folks will toss out an &8220;uffa meg,&8221; which communicates a kind of &8220;woe is me&8221; message.

When I was between grass and hay, I had accompanied my mother to Sibilrud&8217;s Jack Sprat Grocery Store in beautiful downtown Hartland. Mother had taken eggs to sell to the store and to buy some groceries in return. The chickens had been putting in overtime, so we had a plethora of hen fruit. Thanks to their largesse, my mother bought me some Bazooka Bubble Gum. She liked this particular brand of bubblegum because it was educational and promoted reading. Each rectangular piece of pink bubble gum came wrapped in a Bazooka Joe comic. Few things could match the experience of chuckling at corny humor and funny fortunes while chewing a sugary confection.

I had to do all my bubblegum chewing outside of school. Chewing gum wasn&8217;t allowed in the hallowed halls. If my teacher caught me chewing gum, she&8217;d say, &8220;I hope you brought enough for everyone?&8221; Who could afford that? A gum-chewing miscreant would invariably end up with the wad of gum on the end of his nose.

Shortly after my shrewd business dealing of pretending to behave had resulted in my obtaining the Bazooka Bubble Gum, I was busily chewing when I realized that I had not completed one of my chores&8212;the daily ceremonial gathering of the eggs.

I girded my loins for the task ahead by tossing a couple more pieces of bubblegum into my mouth so that I could pretend to be a professional baseball player gathering eggs.

The daylight was fading when I entered the old red henhouse. I stumbled my way to the nest boxes mounted on the wall. It was difficult to see if there were any hens that had gone broody and were trying to incubate the eggs. These hens could be vicious.

I&8217;d feel about in each nest until I found an egg to place in the wire pail I was carrying. The nests appeared to be hen-free. No sooner had that thought passed through my pea-brain when my hand touched feathers. A beak struck my hand with lightning-like speed.

&8220;Ouch!&8221; I cried out both in pain and surprise, spitting out my colossal wad of bubble gum. Well, that wouldn&8217;t do. I didn&8217;t get gum every day. The stuff was like gold.

I forgot all about my egg-gathering obligations and dropped to my hands and knees, searching the darkened henhouse floor for my escaped bubblegum.

Locating it, I grabbed the wad, blew on it to free it from chaff, and tossed it into my mouth.

It wasn&8217;t bubblegum.

It wasn&8217;t even close to being bubblegum.

I said &8220;Uffda!&8221; and I&8217;ve never said it with more fervor.

(Hartland resident Al Batt&8217;s column appears every Wednesday and Sunday. Sometimes, he looks like Bazooka Joe.)