Stories from Exit 22 by Al Batt

The air was filled with the smell of dirty, microwaved sports socks.

The fair was over and I found myself downwind of a garbage container from which this persistent stench was emanating.

It wasn’t the smell of the prize-winning flowers being thrown into the big dumpster.

A florist I knew a little but not very well came over. We said hello but didn’t shake hands. He told me he would buy out a rival florist’s shop if the flowers were handed over peacefully.

There weren’t many dandelions entered for the county fair flower contest. There weren’t any. That’s not many. I could have won a ribbon by showing a puny dandelion.

There are rumors about the winter.

In winter, we plan ahead by adding “weather permitting” to every suggestion on the calendar. “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry” is a famous line from a poem by Robert Burns, written to a mouse whose house is ploughed up by a farmer despite her careful planning.

It’s an August day and, apart from the smell, it sparkles like a diamond, but even on a scorching summer day, it’s hard to forget that winter is coming. It’s easy to forget almost everything else.

I try to live in the here and now. That should be easy. Where else can I go? I try not to think about winter and hope for a nice fall instead. Fall is one of my four favorite seasons. It can bring us any kind of weather. Sometimes it spends too much time reminding us that winter is coming. Fall needs to show some guts before it gives way to winter. I try to enjoy all the weather.

It makes it easier to get through.

I remember one autumn day when the wind blew through my buttonhole.

His power wiped the smile from my face and caused things in his path to whistle, moan, and murmur. I was one of those murmuring things.

A cold wind blowing through my buttonhole brings neither comfort nor security. I did a project evaluation. I needed a replacement button. I did a cost analysis. I needed a free button. There was only one solution. I clung to my mother’s button jar that I had inherited. It was a large jar. I don’t know what was originally in it. Maybe large pickles. Now it held buttons in every color of eleven rainbows and in more sizes than I could count on one of my best days.

I looked at tons of buttons before choosing three likely suspects. I entered them into a contest, a button-off. I placed each button near the buttonhole to see how the replacement button matched up with the buttons that came with the shirt. None of them were a perfect fit, but one was close enough for government work.

When they outgrew the snowman-building, sledding, snowball-throwing, and wild games of fox and goose, my eldest hardly cared about winter anymore. As soon as it got dark under the table, they went to bed. They told me that every day I spent in the summer sun would warm one of my winter days.

We hope for the best but expect the worst from our weather.

I worked with a colleague who always checked the seat of the swivel chair at his desk before sitting down. I asked him why. He told me that he had worked for years at a company that made thumbtacks. He always hoped for the best before sitting down.

Bertrand Russell wrote: “The whole trouble with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so convinced of themselves, and wiser men so full of doubts.”

If we take Russell’s wisdom as a guide, we are all confused by politics, by life, by the weather. The best thing we can do, and we should do it soon, is to find a shade tree on a hot day. That shade tree doesn’t have to be a real tree. It could be a phone call to a loved one or an old friend, for no other reason than “just because.” That shade tree could be a greeting card in someone’s mailbox.

Warm someone’s heart. Winter is coming.

Al Batt’s columns appear every Wednesday in the Tribune.