Mind you, back then I was just out of the monastery. I had joined up during the mid'50's, the Eisenhower years, renouncing a bland world of white bucks, narrow ties, button-down oxford shirts, Then followed thirteen years when daily choice of dress narrowed to black and white, or white and black.

I re-emerged, a Rip Van Winkle, into a 1969 world--Woodstock, Janis Joplin, pot, the green revolution, war protests. And purple polyester bellbottoms. It's a wonder I survived.

I mention those long-gone pants because they had a trait that matches how this column gets written. The pants' polyester/wool fabric, and perhaps also their floppy cut, made them heavy-duty generators of static electricity. On a cold day, a walk across the college campus would build up such a charge that I'd attract paper scraps, dry leaves, even gum wrappers, I'd enter a building with debris to my knees. I'd have to stop and slap the flared cuffs this way and that before entering class. If that style ever comes back, count me out.

But, as I say, attracting odd bits as I walked matches the way I now get writing subjects. It's not by conscious hunting. I just amble around and let them stick to me. That happens in the Fly Creek General Store, of course, but also on Cooperstown streets and in all sorts of meetings. People approach and stick a story on me, or at least the seed of one.

I'm practical enough to shake them off carefully when I get home, and to store them in a computer file labeled "fragments." (A better name,I think, than "scraps" or "gum wrappers.") This file of unrelated bits fills up in time, and I have to thin it out. Whence today's column, which sticks you with some of the overflow.

Here, to start, are two treasured memories of Arrie Hecox, both full of his wit and studied truculence. The first follows on our driving back from Hartwick one day, along Route 205. Arrie always had me turn onto Wileytown Road. There were two farms along it where he'd make me slow so he could admire the horses, or stop dead so he could roll down the window and talk to them.

That day we'd left Hartwick and were almost to the road. "Turn right at the red house," Arrie ordered. As we swung around the corner, I glanced up and said, "Arrie, that house is yellow."

"Was red for years!" he barked. "Still ought to be!" Where do you start to argue with that?

The other Arrie entry concerns a phone call. When I was a widower as he was, a lot of calls went back and forth. My phone would ring every weekday evening at seven, just after he'd paid distant court to his inamorata ("Wheel of Fortune's" Vanna White), and just after he'd tried to outguess contestants on "Jeopardy." Arrie would pick the toughest question from "Jeopardy" and lay it on me by phone.

I'd pick up the receiver and hear an abrupt "What's the capital of Madagascar?" If I answered correctly, he'd say, "Right!" and slam down his receiver. If he stumped me, it would be, "Humph, guess you're not so smart after all!" And then the slam.

One morning I called him about seven-thirty, thinking he'd like a ride into town to the Great American. Because he rarely answered before the tenth ring, I hung on the line and waited. Finally, after the dozenth ring, came his usual telephone opening-not "Hello," but an aggressive "What?"

"I'm heading in town to the store, Arrie. Are you up and dressed yet?" A pause, and then, "Waal, at the moment I'm just wearing the telephone." You see why I still miss that old codger.

Another scrap from the file concerns a Fly Creek good old boy still very much with us. Back in early October, I drove down Cemetery Road to see a trio standing not far inside the Fly Creek Valley Cemetery gate. Superintendent Lyle Wilbert was talking with Phyllis and Greg Lippitt, and I knew what about. They'd asked me the previous week about buying a plot, and I'd referred them to Lyle.

I swung in the gate to visit with three good friends, but by the time I got out of the truck, only Lyle and Phyllis were on their feet. Greg had stepped away. He was now lying full length on the chosen plot, hands under head, checking the fit and maybe the view. That moment stuck to me like lint to polyester. Hard-working Greg, still full of elfish whimsy, trying out his burial plot. How fine to have such folks around here!

The last file entry I'll share has been in there for almost nine years--don't know why I've never passed it on before. It involves one of my Anne's early trips from Annapolis up to Fly Creek-when, as Arrie would say, we was just sparkin'. I'd taken her for a first visit to The Farmers' Museum. Anne loved the whole place, but most of all the animals.

As we walked down the fenced lane beyond the farmhouse (the Lippitt Farmhouse, come to think of it), she spotted two massive oxen, one with its head lolling over the split-rail fence. Anne ran ahead of me. As I caught up, she was already stroking the ox's nose, gently talking to it just as Arrie would. But at that beautiful moment, the huge beast sneezed.

The result was what forecasters might call a weather event. As Anne's head and shoulders recoiled, they disappeared in a cloud of vaporized-well, you pick the noun. But when the cloud cleared, my friend wasn't shocked or crying. She was laughing heartily at the sheer craziness of the moment. And I had new proof that this girl belonged in Fly Creek, that we ought to be sharing a life.

All right, I've lightened my file. But it will fill right up again, just as soon as I go out again among my neighbors. I'll come back home with stories stuck to me like bits of foil on those awful pants.

Jim Atwell lives in and views life from Fly Creek. He can be found on the web at JimAtwell.com.