By John Carlson—
My first thought was, “Dang it all,” or words to that effect.
That’s because having just returned from the drug store bearing a copy of “The Old Farmer’s 2022 Almanac,” I flipped to the weather section and read how more snow than normal was expected this winter. But I also brought home the “Harris’ Farmer’s Almanac for the year of our Lord 2022.” It predicted snowfall would be near normal or even a little below normal, so the operative question was which almanac to believe?
Lots of doubters would answer, “Neither,” but not me.
Why? Flip through these almanacs and there are highfalutin tables involving countless numbers and calculations and intriguing astronomical symbols crowding their pulp pages. Astrological symbols, too, if you are into that sort of thing. Either way, a person of limited intelligence such as myself trusts that the folks putting these together know at least something about what they are writing.
But let’s forget meteorological matters.
The big difference between these almanacs and, say, Playboy magazine – to which Nancy has cancelled my subscription each of the past forty years – is that I actually do read the articles.
That’s how I know come Feb. 20, I will be celebrating Hoodie-Hoo Day in honor of the coming spring. Invented by a Pennsylvania radio deejay named Thomas Roy, celebrants of Hoodie-Hoo Day walk outside at noon and festively chant “Hoodie-Hoo.”
Groovy, huh? And I wouldn’t have known a thing about it without a Harris’ almanac.
By the way, the almanac further reveals that next Oct. 12 you can celebrate International Moment of Frustration Scream Day, another invention of Mr. Roy’s, by loosing an ear-piercing cry of international frustration. And come next Oct. 30? That’s Haunted Refrigerator Night, when you dig missing food containers from the deep recesses of your fridge, then hold your nose and try not to hurl while checking what weird gunk is growing on that ancient slab of lasagna.
But say instead you are an Old Farmer’s reader who finds visiting famous dead animals more edifying than “hoodie-hooing.” That almanac will direct you to the University of Kansas to visit Comanche. The horse, often described as the sole 7th Cavalry survivor of Custer’s Last Stand, has been standing there stuffed and waiting for George to mount up since 1890.
Or want to see dead TV stars? This might be traumatic for those of us who as kids spent Saturday mornings glued to our TV sets, eating our Wheaties and watching Roy Rogers beat up bad guys. That’s because Rogers’ steed, Trigger, stands stuffed somewhere in Fort Worth, alongside his faithful dog Bullet.
What’s that? Your taste runs more to dead gophers? Then head up to Torrington in Alberta, Canada, where the Gopher Hole Museum features multiple dioramas of the stuffed little critters golfing with their buddies and more.
Once again, that’s the sort of vital information to be found in almanacs such as the Old Farmer’s, which also has a story about tracking animals, in case you’d rather see some live ones. There are even helpful illustrations of skunk, fox, coyote, bobcat, mink and raccoon paw prints.
Oh yeah, and bear.
My thinking is it behooves almanac readers to carefully familiarize themselves with that paw print, lest a bear wind up stuffing them into a tree trunk.
But how about chickens? Does anything remarkable make chickens almanac-worthy?
Funny you should ask. According to Harris’ almanac, not only can chickens sleep with one eye open, they also dream. The question is, of what? Unlikely as it seems, chickens are considered the closest living relative to that Cretaceous period bad boy known as Tyrannosaurus rex. As such, chicken researchers agree they probably dream of being twenty-five feet tall and weighing eight tons again, plus ripping KFC franchises to shreds with their teeth.
Heh-heh, just a joke.
Even the almanac’s professional chickenologists aren’t willing to speculate on what chickens dream about.
Of course, not everything in these two farmer’s almanacs is as intriguing as chicken dreams and golfing gophers. Nor is everything as useful as the moon chart detailing the best date next year to make sauerkraut.
But there are all sorts of other almanac offerings, like tips on pickling pumpkins. There are gardening tips, too, and pictures of squashes, some of which look like swans and others so bumpy they resemble small-pox victims.
In these almanacs you’ll also find tips on making fires, producing the perfect lemon meringue pie, plus everything you’ve wanted to know about your teeth. This includes the fact an early toothache cure was thought be be running three times around a church without thinking of a fox, because thinking of a fox would totally screw up your prescription. There’s also word that today’s Tooth Fairy leaves kids an average of $3.19 under their pillows for a dislodged tooth, far more than the crappy nickel my folks left me.
Pick up an almanac and what you’ll mostly find, though, is a thoroughly eclectic and entertaining publication perfectly suited for sailing through autumn. Better still, you don’t even have to keep an almanac charged up, nor scroll past the stupid comments of people you’re convinced are jerks, nuts and/or idiots.
Rather, reading an almanac is the sort of comforting activity that’s been around since 1792 in The Old Farmer’s Almanac’s case, and 1692 for the Harris’ Farmer’s Almanac. And by the way, the former still comes with a convenient hole punched through its binding up top.
That’s so you can keep some interesting reading material handily hanging from a nail in your family’s outhouse.
John’s weekly columns are sponsored by Beasley & Gilkison, Muncie’s trusted attorneys for over 120 years.
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A former longtime feature writer and columnist for The Star Press in Muncie, Indiana, John Carlson is a storyteller with an unflagging appreciation for the wonderful people of East Central Indiana and the tales of their lives, be they funny, poignant, inspirational or all three. John’s columns appear on MuncieJournal.com every Friday.
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