MOULTRIE — Today at the breakfast club, not a mention was made of the Ukrainian crisis, the missing Malaysian airliner or Obamacare — nary a word. It was all about small talk. Small talk, but by way of deep thought.
For instance, we learned that a good way to take a cat to the vet is to put it in a pillow case. A miniature Tasmanian devil can be converted to a static little ball of fur.
Then we took a vote on the best TV commercials. The top one was where the little girl sitting in the back seat of the car asks her mom what was “neutering.” And the camera switches to the family dog seated beside her. The dog lifts its ears and its eyes get really big, and then it sails out the window.
The runner-up was the one where it is decided that Pinocchio is not a good motivational speaker. It was also a consensus that the Sonic commercial with the two guys in the car getting giddy over milkshakes was rather lame. One fellow used the word “dorks.”
We talked about Johnny Dickerson’s extensive arrowhead collection which would fill a small museum. And we all had stories about when we were kids and found our first arrowheads.
And I guess we just had never thought about it, but it was mentioned that the Creeks didn’t know they were Creeks until the white man told them they were Creeks. Then in that vein, someone suggested that maybe we should tell Congress that it isn’t all that smart. It just assumes it’s smart until collectively they are told otherwise. Sometimes things can be so simple when we think them through.
Of course we are all very busy people, and we just don’t allocate much time for deep thinking. So the breakfast club provides such opportunity where we can ponder things that maybe no one has ever pondered before. It’s kind of like going into space ... where no one has been before. Someone overhearing our conversations might suppose that we actually are out in space. But our club keeps growing. We don’t have a secret handshake yet or decoder rings, but we may be developing political power.
So I brought up a subject that I would bet has seldom been the topic of conversations. Corduroy.
That’s right. Corduroy was not found already existing in nature like oil, retsin or the 12 musical notes. Someone had to make it. We wondered who and when. I whipped out my smart phone and Googled it.
Corduroy goes back at least 2,000 years. It was once referred to as the “velvet of poor people.” Somewhere along the way, royalty took a liking to it. King Henry VIII was said to fancy corduroy.
I once had a corduroy coat. It was okay. And I had a pair of corduroy slacks. They were not okay. When I walked it sounded like I was trying to build a fire by rubbing my knees together. You couldn’t sneak up on anyone because they were so noisy. I’m guessing a spy or a Navy Seal would never wear corduroy.
Unlike double knit, which mercifully had a wooden steak driven into its heart along with disco music back in the mid 70s, corduroy has been up and down but always around.
 It got severely resurrected by the hippie movement in the late 60s and early 70s.
And perhaps because of its durability, November 11 is designated as Corduroy Appreciation Day. See, most of you didn’t know that.
And while we’re on the subject of something invented 2,000 years ago, if you ever find a coin that has 200 B.C. stamped on it, you can be assured it’s a fake. I had to explain that to one club member.
Next time, we’ll deal with the Ukraine. We will pose the question: “What would be Russia’s response if the U.S. decided to make Puerto Rico a state?”

Walden is publisher and editor of the Moultrie Observer.