My name is Dale Berner. I was born in 1920 in the house I'm sitting in, and I farmed corn and cattle on this place until 1992, when I rented the ground to the neighbor boy, who is fifty-eight. My wife Anita passed in November of 1996. We had no children of our own, so I have always been Uncle Dale to a good many people, including some who are no relation and a few I couldn't pick out of a crowd.

Last spring my grandniece Katherine put me on the computer. I have answered questions all my life whether anybody asked them or not, and she said this way at least people could ask. So they do. I tell her what to put and she types it exactly. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong in my own words.

Dear Uncle Dale,
My husband will not stop and ask for directions. In August we drove to our daughter's new house in Omaha, which is two and a half hours from here. It took us five hours, and we passed the same water tower three times. He says he was "getting the lay of the land." I say he was lost. I've offered to ask. He won't stop the car. What do I do?
Going in Circles in Grand Island

Dear Going,

I have never asked anybody for directions in my life, and I'll tell you why.

In August of 1936 I was sixteen, and Dad sent me to the county seat in the Model A to get sickle sections for the hay mower. That was the hottest summer anybody around here can remember. The thermometer on the barn quit at 110 and we never did find out how hot it got. The grasshoppers had eaten everything green and started in on the pitchfork handles, for the salt off our hands. I drove twenty-two miles with the windows open and the dust coming in, and I did not see one living soul to ask the way. That was all right, because there was only the one way.

Out here the roads run on the section lines, a mile apart, north and south and east and west, like a checkerboard. You can't get lost by more than a mile. If you think you're lost, keep going until you come to a town or to Kansas. Either one will tell you where you are.

Your husband was raised on roads like that, I'd guess, and then somebody went and built Omaha around him. That isn't his fault. But you can't go around a water tower three times and call it the lay of the land. Once is the lay of the land. Three times is a water tower.

Here's what you do. Next time, you drive. He can sit there and get the lay of the land all he wants. If he won't let you drive, put him in the barn. I'd say that about most things.

About the Model A. She was a 1929 Tudor, black, and Dad got her in 1934 for two heifers and some cash money. The gas tank sat up in front of the windshield, right over your knees, and the gas ran down to the motor on its own, no pump. You could hear it slosh going over a culvert. I got the sickle sections and was home by dark, and Dad asked what took me so long, and I told him I was getting the lay of the land. So your husband did not invent this.

Uncle Dale

--x-----x-----x--

Dear Uncle Dale,
Our cat, Pumpkin, sleeps about twenty hours a day. The other four he sits in the window and looks at me like I owe him money. The vet says he is perfectly healthy. Is there any way to get him to do something?
Tired of Watching in Tulsa

Dear Tired,

On a farm, a cat has a job and he knows it. We kept five or six in the barn when I was a boy, and they kept the mice out of the corn crib and the oat bin, and they were as busy as anybody on the place. Mother set out a pan of milk for them at milking time and that was their wages.

There was a big gray tom in 1938 we called the Senator, because all he ever did was sit in the sun and take credit. He was the best mouser we ever had. He did it all at night when nobody was looking. That may be your trouble. Pumpkin is working nights.

Or else he has retired. I quit farming in 1992 and I sleep about as much as your Pumpkin does, and nobody has written to the paper about me yet. Anybody who has worked has a right to a window.

If you want him to do something, give him something to do. Put him in the barn. A cat in a barn finds plenty of business.

Uncle Dale

[Katherine here. Tired lives in an apartment. I told Uncle Dale. He said, "Well, that's her problem." -K.]

--x-----x-----x--

Dear Uncle Dale,
Our son gave us a computer for our fortieth anniversary. It beeps at me. Not all the time, just when I'm trying to do something. My grandson says it is "trying to tell me something." What could it be trying to tell me? It won't say.
Beeped At in Beatrice

Dear Beeped At,

Congratulations on forty years. A good many things have taken to beeping at me lately and I have come to some conclusions.

The microwave beeps when it's done. The pickup beeps when I leave the door open. The smoke alarm Anita's sister gave us started beeping about once a minute in the fall of 1991 because its battery was low, and it beeped for three days before I found it, because she'd put it in the spare room closet so it wouldn't be in the way.

So everything I know of that beeps wants one of three things. It's done, or something's open, or it's hungry.

Your computer isn't done. You'd know. See if anything is open. Then feed it.

If none of that works, put it in the barn for a week. When you bring it back in the house it'll be glad to see you, and it won't beep so much. That's what we did with the rooster, and with my brother Sol, in 1941.

Uncle Dale

[Katherine here. Please do NOT put your computer in the barn. When a computer beeps, it usually means there's a little box on the screen waiting for you to click OK, and sometimes the box is hiding behind another window. Or something is resting on the keyboard. Check for a book or a coffee cup. Uncle Dale is right about one thing: it's waiting on you. Also, Grandpa Sol says he was only in the barn one night and he had it coming. -K.]

--x-----x-----x--

QUICK ONES

Is it going to be a hard winter? Wondering in Wayne
Yes. They all are. Get the tank heater out.

How do I get my grandchildren to call me more? Lonesome in Lexington
Learn the e-mail. Katherine says that's where they all are now. I'm learning it myself. This column is as far as I've got.

My husband says I talk too much. Chatty in Chadron
How long have you been married? If it's twenty years, he's been saying that for twenty years and he's still there. Keep talking.