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Borrowed Thoughts
Random Thoughts – May 12, 2022
Random Thoughts by Wendell Smith

MUSCODA - I am borrowing words from Progressive writers of the past. Because the Muscoda Morel Festival is just about here, I found a poem, “MOREL HUNTER DREAM”, that fits the time table. It was written for the May 8, 1993 issue by Terry Morgan of the Cuba City area and is a good fit for my personal lack of luck when it comes to morel hunting.

“Spring is coming to a woods near you and morel hunters know what they must do.

They sneak quietly out at the break of day so as not to scare the morels away.

A real hunter seems to know where thousands of these treasures grow.

And he’ll return like a mighty king, while failures like me won’t find a thing.

I have no luck, it’s just my fate to have big dreams, but an empty plate!”

I do remember an early festival when I had positive results with morel mushrooms. The Chamber of Commerce was frying and selling mushrooms from a stand from a stand next to the theater building. The regular cook had to take leave of absence and he asked me to fry the morels, something I had never done.

That was the time when an out-of-towner from Minnesota stopped by and ordered a helping of fried morels, and then another order and a third. Finally he said, “I don’t know what you do for a living, but you should quit it and just fry mushrooms!” That was quite a compliment as I grew up in Nebraska with no morels and had yet to eat one. I have often wondered how far my morel-eating customer got on his trip home before he had to stop.

The Morgan poem about hunting morels describes my experiences. One year a television crew from Japan came to our community to hunt mushroom for a story. It was not a good hunt. It did yield pictures – but few morels. I may have been a jinx.

Mothers Day

In the same Progressive issue as the morel poem, columnist Cathy Johnson, who lived on an Avoca area farm, had the following comments about Mothers Day.

“Statistics say that mothers are the least paid servants. Geez, I wasn’t aware that we were getting paid. I do know that statistics say that the average mother makes more decisions before 10:00 in ONE morning, than Congress makes in three months.”

I love to read statistics. Another is that: “If one took all the chocolate chip cookies that were made by ALL the mothers in the world, and the cookies were placed end to end, they would go around the world SEVEN times!”

One more: “If mothers were paid for everything they do for their child, from the time the child was brought into the world, until the child reaches the age of 18 years, if she were paid in ONE dollar bills, the bills would reach to the moon and back, SIX times!”

Cathy didn’t know who figured out these statistics, but she sure enjoyed reading them.