IOWA BOWHUNTER FALL 2023/WINTER 2024

BONKER’S WORLD WINTER ISSUE (Cont.)

I dug around and found the bottle of blackberry brandy, a.k.a. cooking potion, from a couple of years ago. It had changed from a nice blackberry color to more of a dead moss color. Well, I couldn’t stop now, so I unscrewed the cap and took a sniff. The color may have been dead moss, but the smell was more like dead mouse. I had to do it, I had to take a thimble full. Wow, was that stuff nasty. About ten seconds after that thimble full hit bottom my eyes were spinning in opposite directions, steam was going out of my ears and my ability to think and reason, which have never been good, was severely impaired. It passed rather quickly though and I realized she wasn’t setting me up for anything, or maybe she was getting even with me for something? What could she be getting even with me for? I’ve been a very good husband, I haven’t been mean to the cat, I haven’t shot at anything off the back deck, I’ve put the seat back down, I mostly remember to take the garbage cans to the curb and bring them back and I haven’t been in the penalty box for a year or so. Then it dawned on me, our anniversary was several weeks ago. If you remember from a recent Bonkers’ World we were going to do something big for our anniversary and my idea was to go to Canada fishing. I was sure she wouldn’t mind using outhouses, doing battle with

mosquitoes, bears and forest fires because we’d be together. I finished my part of the holiday cooking, as a side note, who calls a dish with mandarin oranges, cottage cheese, cool whip and orange jello a salad? I call that a big bucket of “No Thank You.” Salads have lettuce, and all kinds of good stuff smothered in western dressing. I don’t think that orange stuff even qualifies as a desert. And that’s all I have to say about that. Anyway, I was pondering the whole anniversary thing and I hadn’t gotten a yes or no on my idea, unless I was supposed to interpret an eye roll and a shake of a head as no….. That evening after the cooking was done I decided I better broach the subject of the anniversary trip again. “Uhhh Hun,” I said. “Yes Snookums?” She replied. “We should probably revisit our anniversary trip. I realize Canada was probably a bad idea,” I paused to give her a chance to say that Canada was a great idea, but that didn’t happen so

I continued “have you come up with any trips you would like to take?” I braced myself for something like Paris in spring time or Michu Picchu during the rainy season, but what I heard her say instead was “You know, both of us are baseball fans in general and the Cubs fans in particular, how about going to Spring Training?” I told her it sounded like a wonderful idea, but those tickets sell out fast and they’ve been on sale for a week or two. She just smiled, clicked something on her keyboard and said check your email. My computer said “You’ve got mail.” I opened it up and it was a complete itinerary for five days in Mesa Arizona with tickets for the last three Spring Training games for the Cubs before the regular season. The hotel is right across the street from Sloan Park, the seats will be in the shade and the flights are nonstop from Cedar Rapids. I guess I’ve been a very good husband after all. Now if my lovely wife could just convince the local lakes to freeze…..

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