Since it was too cold Saturday to soak in his pool and too foggy to shoot arrows, Sam decided to tour the countryside. His golf partner, Pike, was gone, and his daughter was playing the fife, which made his ears throb. As a result, he wanted to get out of the house, so he dashed to the family car before his wife, Joan, caught him. He still hadn't started washing the dishes from last night. He took off as fast as he could and hit the culvert as he pulled out of his drive. "I can't stay cooped up inside on such a nice day," he thought. Watching the telephone poles zip by, he passed both a school and a hospital. After five minutes, he drove around Hoover Dam, where he saw a sight to behold -- there must've been a thousand seagulls eating dead fish. On Friday, all he'd seen were men pushing a boat through the water along the end of the dam. Next he rode through some farms with soybean fields and the ragweed in the dust-filled air was so bad it made him cough. He'd be a fool if he didn't have the sense to avoid those plants. They made his voice sound hoarse. Not far away, he heard a dog barking. Maybe the ragweed bothered it, too. At least August was peaceful. He enjoyed looking at a hawk above and the hogs, horses, cows, and a bull this Saturday morning, and now he felt refreshed. Even a goat chewing on a tin can looked happy. He headed back to town. There he passed Cooper's Forks, where he'd renewed his medical insurance on Tuesday. Checking his pocket for cash, he stopped at a Gulf station and bought some gas because Joan wanted a full tank. "You don't have any driveway salt, do you?" he asked the manager. "No, but Tharp's tool store ought to sell ten-pound bags cheap," the manager answered. "I only need five right now," he nodded, "plus some hooks, bolts, and a bushel basket." He rushed to the store, which was having a special on light bulbs, and first he bought those things and then, second, two cots on sale. With the spare tire, they were a tight fit in his small-sized foreign auto. On the way home, he saw a guy fixing the roof of his house and thought, "I need to put a fall coat of paint on my own house -- it looks dull." The tar on the road had gone from hard to soft, since it had gotten hot, and he recalled that Joan would be hostile if he didn't wash that big, dark cooking pot on the stove. Picturing the fire in her eyes, he took a shortcut down Tuttle Street and got home just in time to hear his other daughter practice the violin. She sounded as horrible as her sister. "Oh, my poor ears," he muttered as he poured out the dish soap. "I guess there's no cure for this."