We like looking back because we don’t have to figure out how to get there. Here’s another look at what happened last month.

A recent study suggested that eating vegetables is good for us. My mother was right again.

Big Brown brought in the big green.

The Indianapolis 500 took place. Maybe next year, the winner will be the car that gets the best gas mileage.

Dick Martin, of “Laugh-In” fame, shuffled off this mortal coil. Was he a funny man? You bet your sweet bippy, he was.

Phone booths

I used to talk in phone booths. Oh, I talked in places other than phone booths, but I appreciated the booths. As I traveled about and felt the need to make a phone call, I would find one of the ubiquitous booths. They were the gargantuan cell phones of their day. The farmhouse I grew up in had but one telephone. It was a black, dial phone the size of a Volkswagen Beetle mounted on the wall of the living room. It was not a phone that welcomed privacy. If I wanted to talk mush to my future wife, I would make my way to a phone booth. There I would be able to pitch as much woo as I liked without anyone other than my sweetie and possibly the operator hearing—as long as I had enough change to feed the pay phone’s insatiable appetite.

It’s tiring

I was driving down the highway when I was passed by a small car.

Now there is nothing unusual about that. I get passed by small automobiles often. Big ones pass me, too. What was unusual was that the car that passed me was sporting one of those small spare tires—a doughnut good for up to 50 miles per hour.

The car and the spare tire (they were a package) were far exceeding that speed.

I thought back to the good old days when all automobiles were equipped with full-sized spare tires mounted firmly in trunks the size of the small car that overtook me on the interstate highway.

The drive-in theater

The first drive-in theater opened on June 6, 1933 and showed the movie Wife Beware. By 1958, nearly 5,000 drive-in theaters were in their big screen entertainment glory. As of 2007, that number had dwindled to 405. Going to a drive-in movie was an interesting experience. Sitting in the comfort of my own darkened car with a tub of popcorn and my very own speaker hanging from the window was beyond good. It was a great place for a guy like me to take his best girl. I called the drive-in movie theater the “passion pit.” I was an optimistic young man.

The news from Hartland Harold

Some call him a gossip. We call him Hartland Harold. Here are his recent headlines.

Fuel’s Paradise offers a free box of tissue with the purchase of 10 gallons or more of gasoline.

Einstein Burgers are relatively good.

Sue First, local attorney, buys advertising on automobile air bags.

Local church hires recent graduate of seminary. The congregation had voted to move on to greener pastors.

Former psychiatrist begins singing career, billing himself as “Shrink Rap.”

Nose Hair Club For Men opens in West Hartland.

Ask Al

“Hey, Al, are you self-employed?” Yes, but I like to think of it as being independently poor.

“Hey, Al, where do you find elephants?” It depends on where you lost them.

“Hey, Al, if you were stranded on a desert island and you could have anyone living or dead for a companion, who would you chose?” Someone living.

“Hey, Al, who invented bowling?” Fred “Three Fingers” Johnson.

“Hey, Al, what is a recession?” It’s when the sales of generic peanut butter go up.

A couple of things

Thank you to all who commented on my Memorial Day speeches. To stand at a cemetery and talk about our dead heroes is an unbelievable honor and an incredibly humbling experience. We owe those who died for this wonderful country a debt that we will never be able to repay. The very least we can do is to never forget them.

Not a day goes by in which someone does not ask me if I have a blog. I do not. I’m not sure why I don’t have one and I’m not sure why I should have one. Of course, I once thought the same thing about the computer, the cell phone, and shoes. Life is a river in which change flows.

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