Isolated thunderstorms early, becoming clear after midnight. Low 62F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 30%..

Isolated thunderstorms early, becoming clear after midnight. Low 62F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 30%.

I was reading a book about Ben Franklin when I ran across something interesting. It seems that Franklin and some of his highly intellectual friends formed a club called the Junto, which means “secret club.”

Well, I’ve heard of lots of clubs, of course, and so have you no doubt. In fact, way back in Staten Island, N.Y., where I was born, and where I lived until I was 11, the older neighborhood kids were always trying to get a club started. However, they could never find a place where they could meet secretly, so their club never got created.

Well, one day I was sitting on our front porch and I saw all the older kids working to dig a hole in the field across the way. So I strolled over to see what was up; but when I asked the question, my brother, Frankie, who was eight years older, told me, “None of your business!”

Frankie was not my favorite person!

I strolled back to our porch and watched that bunch as they dug, and dug, and dug, wondering what they were up to. Then Benny Battaglia, one of them who had been doing more watching than working, casually strolled over and asked me what I thought of their idea for a clubhouse.

“You’re digging a hole in the ground for a clubhouse?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said, looking very superior. “It’ll be real secret.”

Not one word did I say about what had automatically occurred to me as I looked up at the sky.

Well, they got it built: Six feet square, eight feet deep, and covered with a top made out of some solid wooden planks, it had a trapdoor and a ladder that went down into their secret lair.

The next day I had to stay away from that bunch of duds because I was, of course, laughing so hard. Can you figure out why?

Right! It rained that night! Hard! And what they now had was an eight-foot-deep, nicely squared mud puddle with a floating wooden top.

One tiny thought about the fact that it eventually was going to rain and drown their fancy-dancy clubhouse would have saved them all a lot of trouble, true? So, whatever we do, we have to think of what science has to say about it, right?

Well, as I said, Ben Franklin formed the Junto Club, which was created to discuss “great” questions. Like what?

Here’s one: “What is the reason that the tides rise higher in the Bay of Fundy than in the Bay of Delaware?”

What was their answer? The book I was reading didn’t say, but having read what Franklin so often claimed was the reason why people caught colds (because their hearts pumped too fast and they got overheated), I would guess their answer was something like, “Because the waves try harder in the Bay of Fundy.”

Anyway, just for the heck of it I looked up the very high tides in the Bay of Fundy, which are 40 feet high because the length of the bay happens to coincide with the length of time it takes for the tide to go in or out, so there’s a “rocking back and forth” effect, a lot like what happens when kids get on a swing, get it going at just the right speed, and it goes so high it scares them. (I’ve done that, haven’t you? But I wouldn’t do it now because I know it might break the ropes or chains.)

Well, that got me thinking, and I remembered something I learned from Lolly, my beloved wife, many years ago.

Learned what? Why it’s not too smart to hurry across a room with a well-filled teacup.

Why? Because the natural pace of an average human being is just right to cause liquid in a teacup to slosh back and forth and end up spilling.

Solution? Use a coffee mug, in which the liquid sloshes back and forth at a different rate.

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