You might have noticed The Journal has begun to attach a photo to these biweekly dawdlings. Editor Sweeney noticed me on the streets of New Ulm despite the fake nose and glasses I was wearing. He forced me into Journal headquarters to take pictures up against a bare wall, basically mugshots.

In the first one of these I attempted to look intelligent. When that photo was used the next week a friend texted and said I looked like I was gripping an electric fence. Apparently looking intelligent for me is painful. Even now, I am grimacing as I try to write.

In the second photo Editor Sweeney demanded that I smile. That is the photo that has been used since the electric fencer. I have a wide, toothy grin and look astonishingly happy. It is deceptive; I’m not that happy. C’mon. We have the worst presidential choice in our nation’s history, the Twins are terrible, mosquitoes have taken over the earth. Need I go on?

I was okay not having a photo appended to my column. I did this about thirty years ago for the Sleepy Eye paper. They used a photo, but I looked about thirty years younger then. Since, there has been serious migration by my facial skin. Apparently whole muscle groups got lazy or simply retired.

I prefer anonymity. That is why I appreciated that Editor Sweeney let me use a pen name when I first started writing for The Journal. I wrote some wickedly creative columns as Juan Humberto Vazquez. Readers especially appreciated my piece about the impact of salsa dancing on a young boy growing up on the farm.

When The Journal legal department informed me that I had to use my real name a lot of you were disappointed to find out that I wasn’t really Juan Humberto Vazquez. To make matters worse, now there’s a picture of me. Readership has plummeted. It’s down to a few close relatives and inmates at the Brown County Jail where the only other choices are old Farm Journals and some Cosmopolitans with the pictures torn out.

I think most of us don’t particularly like photos of ourselves. Day to day we don’t see our own faces except for the tip of our nose and maybe some disheveled hair if we look up. In doing research for this column, I realize that I can also see my tongue if I stick it out far enough and I move it to one side or the other of my nose. Feel free to try that yourself; you might want to wait till you’re alone.

I don’t have a lot of pictures from my youth. There weren’t many cameras around back then. There might be a couple of cave drawings that I appear in. The only pictures of me are a few my older brother shot when he came home to visit. These are a series of photos that can be titled “Chubby kid with dirty shirt and scruffy pet.” I am smiling in these pictures. I assume it was because I was having a snack after the photo shoot. Otherwise there is scant photographic evidence of my early years.

When I got older and had kids, I mostly took the pictures. It is common for dads to be on the backside of the camera. I sometimes appear as a shadow or a hand trying to push my son closer to his sisters.

There is one photo of me that survives. That is my high school graduation picture. Nowadays seniors take a number of photos in various outfits and settings reflecting their school activities and their personality. Back then our moms just hoped to get one picture where we didn’t look we were drunk or a mass killer. It was a low bar.

The tradition back then was to exchange pictures with every member of the class. We were expected to write a personal note to each of our classmates. I have those bound by a rubber band in a box of things that date back to Gerald Ford’s presidency. (Be honest, you forgot that Gerald Ford was president. I looked it up to be sure.)

The messages are not particularly heartfelt, but they reflect part of my life. They fall into three categories. From the girls in my class, I got this: “To someone I never really got to know. It seemed like you were funny and a nice guy. I’ll always remember sitting near you in Mr. Conway’s class. Or maybe it was Mr. Pelzel’s. Good luck in the future. I hope we see each other again, sort of.”

My friends wrote something like this, “I’ll never forget the stupid things we did. I’m glad we didn’t get caught and hope the statute of limitations passes. Good luck in the future. I hope we see each other again. I hope it’s not in jail.”

Then there were the popular kids: “To someone I never really got to know. It seemed like you were funny and a nice guy. I’ll never forget you. OK, that might not be true as even now you’re face is kind of a blur to me. Good luck in the future. I hope we see each other again. If we do, could you remind me who you are?”

Speaking of pictures, I collected baseball cards when I was a kid. I’ve always thought there should be farmer trading cards. On the front side there could be a still photo of the farmer up in the yard, or else an action photo out in the field. On the back side instead of baseball stats like BA, RBIs, and OPS, you could have farmer stats: AP, BPA, and GSub (acres planted, bushel per acre, and government subsidy).

In card shops, you see all star and Hall of Fame players’ cards displayed on shelves in protective plastic sleeves. These are valuable. In farmer cards, here’s where you’d find a highly collectible John Schwartz rookie card. Then there are large boxes of loose cards called “commons.” Here you find the utility infielders and middle relievers. You’d probably find my farmer card in there.