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Tales from Exit 22 by Al Batt

He’d been a spunky boy.

Everyone said so — his parents, teachers and family elders. He had way too much energy for those who weren’t morning people.

“You’ve got spunk,” Lou Grant said to Mary Richards on the first episode of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” And then Grant added, “I hate spunk.”

Reuben loved spunk. He worried he was losing something that had defined his life.

His son had taken over the farm, especially the decision-making portion. That had been Reuben’s plan all along, but he missed piloting the ship. The transfer of power continued, but Reuben remained concerned about who should get his Milwaukee Braves baseball card collection featuring Hank Aaron, Eddie Mathews, Warren Spahn, Joe Adcock and Del Crandall. Things had changed on the farm. A 50-pound bag of seed corn with 80,000 kernels ran $250-300 to plant 2.6-2.7 acres. Fertilizer costs added the national debt to the input costs per acre because corn needs to be head high by the 4th of July. Why, some parts of the country use 54-row planters. Uffda!

The price of everything can be befuddling. When flummoxed, Reuben said “Irish wristwatch” repeatedly until the coast cleared.

His son had two boys joining him in the farming operation. The oldest one was thinking of getting married, and Reuben’s younger grandson was growing 4 inches taller each day.

When he told the grandsons stories of when the farm had pigs and both dairy and beef cattle, they offered sympathetic nods in return.

Reuben sings a little Frank Zappa when saying “Irish wristwatch” doesn’t work: “I might be moving to Montana soon just to raise me up a crop of dental floss. Raising it up, waxing it down … Moving to Montana soon. Gonna be a dental floss tycoon.”

His grandsons don’t understand that song. Reuben doesn’t either, but he’d learned long ago that you didn’t have to understand something to enjoy it.

Reuben still worked on the farm, mainly running errands to town or navigating a grain cart. He liked recess when he was in school, but not now, and he’d been too busy in his younger years to develop retirement skills other than napping and watching baseball and softball during the time he’d saved by not tying his shoes because he had footwear he stepped into. He didn’t care about golf, had bought no cryptocurrency, and enjoyed fishing as long as he caught nothing.

When he meets with his fellow members of the Loafers’ Club for coffee at the Table of Infinite Knowledge at the Eat Around It Cafe and bemoans his present predicament, he finds little comfort in their response, “Join the club.”

If Reuben ever writes an inspirational song, he’d leave that part out.

His wife told him that if he needed something to do, he should gather up things he no longer used and haul them to the Salvation Army store. She accused him of being like Noah and saving two of everything.

He had goods, chattels and effects he could do without. He grew up listening to his grandfather tell tales of the Great Depression and advising Reuben to throw nothing away because you never know.

Reuben filled his pickup truck with usable items and drove them to the Salvation Army dock. A couple of young workers helped him unload the cargo. They thanked him and recommended he venture inside the store. Reuben decided he would. He had the time and might find a book worth buying.

He ambled about the store. He found nothing he wanted until he looked at the hats. Reuben was a farmer, which meant he owned enough hats to cover every noggin in the small town nearest to his home, but he looked anyway.

It jumped out at him. It didn’t even have a bill as a proper cap should, but it had something else. It was uplifting.

It was a beanie with a propeller at its peak.

Reuben bought the cap and left the store grinning like a Cheshire cat.

He wears the hat when he goes to town.

Now, when someone asks him what he was doing with all his free time, he’d proudly tell them he was working as a walking wind turbine.

That’s how Reuben got his spunk back.

Al Batt’s column appears in the Tribune every Wednesday.