What the Heck! Old People Don’t Get Married!

Reblog of an old post.  Original art by Kathleen Swain who is now 87.  This is her story.

lbeth1950's avatarNutsrok

Wuppin' Mama0006Cousin Katie got married!  What the heck!  Old people don’t married. An old man and his old, old grouchy mama came to visit.   I was only four in 1932 and got this news, like most of life’s important information, from my favorite eavesdropping post under the table. I pretended to play with my paper dolls as Mama and Katie drank coffee and learned Katie

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Joke of the Day

Irish-Philosop

 

One night, Mrs McMillen answers the door to see her husbands best friend, Paddy, standing on the doorstep.

“Hello Paddy, but where is my husband? He went with you to the beer factory”

Paddy shook his head. “Ah Mrs McMillen, there was a terrible accident at the beer factory, your husband fell into a vat of Guinness stout and drowned”

Mrs McMillen starts crying. “Oh don’t tell me that, did he at least go quickly?”

Paddy shakes his head. “Not really – he got out 3 times to pee!”

An Irishman was flustered not being able to find a parking space in a large mall’s parking lot.

“Lord,”he prayed,”I can’t stand this.If you open a space up for me,I swear I’ll give up drinking me whiskey, and I promise to go to church every Sunday.”

Suddenly, the clouds parted and the sun shone on an empty parking spot. Without hesitation, the man said,”Never mind,I found one.”

Two paddies were working for the city public works department. One would dig a hole and the other would follow behind him and fill the hole in. They worked up one side of the street, then down the other, then moved on to the next street, working furiously all day without rest, one man digging a hole, the other filling it in again.

An onlooker was amazed at their hard work, but couldn’t understand what they were doing. So he asked the hole digger, “I’m impressed by the effort you two are putting in to your work, but I don’t get it – why do you dig a hole, only to have your partner follow behind and fill it up again?”

The hole digger wiped his brow and sighed, “Well, I suppose it probably looks odd because we’re normally a three-person team. But today the lad who plants the trees called in sick.'”

irish pub

Source: NewsComAu

What’s the difference between God and Bono?
God doesn’t wander around Dublin thinking he’s Bono.

Billy stops Paddy in Dublin and asks for the quickest way to Cork.
Paddy says, “Are you on foot or in the car?”
Billy says, “In the car.”
Paddy says, “That’s the quickest way.”

Paddy and Mick are walking down the road and Paddy’s got a bag of doughnuts in his hand.
Paddy says to Mick, “If you can guess how many doughnuts are in my bag, you can have them both”

A Texan walks into a pub in Ireland and clears his voice to the crowd of drinkers. He says, “I hear you Irish are a bunch of hard drinkers. I’ll give $500 American dollars to anybody in here who can drink 10 pints of Guinness back-to-back.”

The room is quiet and no one takes up the Texan’s offer. One man even leaves. Thirty minutes later the same gentleman who left shows back up and taps the Texan on the shoulder. “Is your bet still good?”, asks the Irishman.

The Texan says yes and asks the bartender to line up 10 pints of Guinness. Immediately the Irishman tears into all 10 of the pint glasses drinking them all back-to-back. The other pub patrons cheer as the Texan sits in amazement.

The Texan gives the Irishman the $500 and says, “If ya don’t mind me askin’, where did you go for that 30 minutes you were gone?”

The Irishman replies, “Oh…I had to go to the pub down the street to see if I could do it first”.

An Irish priest is driving down to New York and gets stopped for speeding in Connecticut. The state trooper smells alcohol on the priest’s breath and then sees an empty wine bottle on the floor of the car.

He says, “Sir, have you been drinking?”

“Just water,” says the priest.

The trooper says, “Then why do I smell wine?”

The priest looks at the bottle and says, “Good Lord! He’s done it again!”

Gallagher opened the morning newspaper and was dumbfounded to read in the obituary column that he had died. He quickly phoned his best friend Finney.

“Did you see the paper?” asked Gallagher. “They say I died!!”

“Yes, I saw it!” replied Finney. “Where are ye callin’ from?”

Father Murphy walks into a pub in Donegal, and says to the first man he meets, “Do you want to go to heaven?”

The man said, “I do Father.”

The priest said, “Then stand over there against the wall.” Then the priest asked the second man, “Do you want to go to heaven?”

“Certainly, Father,” was the man’s reply.

“Then stand over there against the wall,” said the priest. Then Father Murphy walked up to O’Toole and said, “Do you want to go to heaven?”

O’Toole said, “No, I don’t Father.

The priest said, “I don’t believe this. You mean to tell me that when you die you don’t want to go to heaven?”

O’Toole said, “Oh, when I die, yes. I thought you were getting a group together to go on a trip right now.”Irish 2

'Celebrating St Patrick's Day??? No, no, we're big Dr Seuss fans.'

‘Celebrating St Patrick’s Day??? No, no, we’re big Dr Seuss fans.’

Irish 3Irish4Irish6

Common Sense and the Camper (Part 2)

https://atomic-temporary-73629786.wpcomstaging.com/2015/11/18/common-sense-and-the-camper/

CamperOne of the great benefits of my parent’s cross-country camping trip was that they had the opportunity to share their cab-over camper for three weeks with two hormone-ridden teenage girls.  For some reason, they’d taken leave of their senses and forced my sixteen-year-old sister Marilyn to accompany them, though she could have stayed with either me or Phyllis, either of whom were as married and dull as Mother and Daddy ever thought of being.  They sweetened the pot by letting her friend Rhonda who became every bit as unpleasant as Marilyn after a few snug hours together.

In the way of teenagers everywhere, the girls snored snugly in their bunks all day as the camper passed the glorious sites of the Americas.  As a result, both were wide-awake and ready to go when they stopped to make camp every evening.  At an RV camp in Las Vegas, two young ladies who looked to have complicated social situations dawdled about the office as they checked in.  Before, I go on with this story, you need to know, my dad was a no-nonsense “I ain’t worried if you like me.  I’m your Daddy” kind of guy.  He didn’t put up with any nonsense.  He pointed out that RV Camp Girls looked trampy.  Though Marilyn and Rhonda didn’t even talk to them, they got a nice lecture just in case they’d ever thought of dressing or acting “like them trashy gals,”  a term he often used make a point and make his girls’ blood boil.

They made camp and cooked supper outdoors.  About ten o’clock as their evening drew to a close Daddy told his disgusted girls it was about time to turn out the lights and settle in for the night.  After a long day of napping, naturally, they dawdled.  After a couple of warnings, just as the lights went out, there was a knock at the camper door.  He opened it to find the two young lovelies they’d seen at the office earlier in the day.  One of them was obviously pregnant below her brief halter-top.

“Can your girls go out for a while?  We’ve got dates for them?” they asked, invitingly.

Behind him, Mother and the big-eyed girls waited for him to explode into a vitriolic diatribe at their request.  Instead, he replied as calmly as if he had been at a tea-party and asked if he wanted “one lump or two.”

“Well, I guess not, but thanks for inviting them.  We have to leave pretty early in the morning.”

Pigs flew and Hell froze over.

Cousin Barbie Gets Married

imageA few years ago Mother got the thrilling news that her cousin Cookie’s daughter was getting married. When Cookie and Mother were young, they were dear friends, but time and circumstances had come between them.   Now the wedding of a distant cousin’s daughter normally doesn’t make a widowed lady in her late seventies jump for joy, but Continue reading

Breakfast With Barbie

BreakfastMother’s house was bedlam the morning after Daddy died.  Someone made a quick trip to the store for breakfast fixings for Cox’s Army while the rest of us pulled the house back together.  The term “quick trip” was relative, since the nearest grocery store was twenty-two miles away. It was a mess since we’d had to find beds for fourteen the night before, Continue reading

Afternoon Funny

Mike the Headless Chicken (Rooster)

May 11 – FRUITA – While most communities observe Colorado Heritage Week with events dedicated to pioneers, the town of Fruita has decided to celebrate with something that only the Western Slope town can crow about. Rupert PumpkinMike the Headless Chicken Day on Sunday will honor a 1940s rooster who for 4 1/2 years strutted around, fattened up on grain and preened for hens – all without a head.

Mike lost his head in 1945 when a Fruita farmer, anticipating a chicken dinner, lopped off the head of a young Wyandotte rooster. Instead of croaking and getting sent to the cooking pot, Mike the rooster wobbled away from the chopping block and resumed his temporarily interrupted barnyard activities with the rest of the heads-on chickens.

His headless life garnered him spreads in Life and Time magazines and a listing in the Guinness Book of Records. He had his own manager and toured the country in sideshows with a two-headed calf. He was studied by scientists, who determined an intact brain stem was keeping Mike going.

Mike’s fame faded out after he finally died from choking on a corn kernel, but now headless Mike is in for a revival of sorts.

Mike the Headless Chicken Day will feature a 5K Run Like a Headless Chicken race, egg tosses, chicken jokes, a chicken lunch and chicken bingo, in which numbers are chosen by where chicken droppings fall on a numbered grid. There will also be music, microbrew competitions and historic tours of the town.

“To celebrate our history in Fruita, we wanted to have something light-hearted,” said Sally Edington, executive director of the Fruita Chamber of Commerce. “We wanted to celebrate this little guy because he was very determined to live. We like that.”

According to old accounts in the Fruita Times newspaper, Mike’s determination first showed itself Sept. 10, 1945, when farmer L.A. Olsen tried to please his mother-in-law while he was slaughtering dinner. Her favorite fried-chicken piece was the neck, so Olsen carefully placed his ax to leave as much neck as possible on Mike’s body.

Chickens have been known to flutter around for seconds or minutes after being decapitated, but after a few shaky steps, Mike fluffed up his feathers and went about his business in the barnyard with the other, heads on chickens. He went through the motions of pecking for food, preening his feathers and tucking what used to be his head under his wing when he slept. He tried to crow, but only a gurgle came out.

When he was still alive the following morning, Olsen decided he might be more valuable as an oddity than a dinner and started dropping grain and water into his gullet opening with an eyedropper.

When Mike was still alive a week later, Olsen packed him up and took him to Salt Lake City so incredulous University of Utah scientists could study him. From that time on, Olsen and a manager he hired were the ones running around like chickens with their heads cut off. They took Mike and Mike’s head, which Olsen had preserved in alcohol, to Los Angeles, San Diego, Atlantic City and New York City. They set up photo shoots with magazines and newspapers and kibitzed with scientists across the country.

Olsen also dealt with predecessors of animal-rights activists, who blasted him for leaving a chicken alive in such a state. They begged him to finish the hatchet job on the Mike. But Fruita old-timers remember that Mike grew and thrived and didn’t seem much bothered by being minus a head. Gayle Meyer, who interviewed Olsen in the 1980s before he died, said he described Mike as “a robust chicken – a fine specimen of a chicken except for not having a head.” Copyright 1999 The Denver Post.

Footloose and Fancy Free (Part 3)

breastBobo’s old truck rattled in one Saturday about four. White-headed kids in overalls piled out of the back, their bare feet kicking up a dust. Fishing poles dangled out of the truck bed. Grinning, Bobo slung a stringer of bream over his shoulder. Inez slid out of the front seat, wagging a newborn and helping her twin toddlers slide to the ground. One was diapered, Continue reading

Footloose and Fancyfree (Part 2)

Repost:

 

True - Wedding Dresses for Pregnant Women

Even though the occasion of Bobo and Inez’s marriage preceeded my birth by a few days, Mother has told me the story so often, I feel I was there. Bobo showed up with his bride just hours after they married. No doubt, he was proud of her. He was twenty-seven; she, fifteen and visibly pregnant. Now, he’d be arrested. Quite a buxom lass, she was lovely. Continue reading

Footloose and Fancy-Free (Part 1)

overalls 2repost:

Cousin Bobo was footloose and fancy-free, unperturbed by the economic responsibilities of four children in three years. He doted on his child-bride, Inez, living quite happily with her and their family in an old unpainted, farm house on her mama’s place. Despite his aversion to a regular work schedule, he and Inez managed fine. There was no power to the house, so no bills, the wood stove and fireplace sufficing for heat and cooking. The house was abandoned when they moved in, so he tacked wire over the open windows to keep varmints out, shuttering the windows for bad weather. Mama was real proud he did the right thing and married Inez, so she wasn’t about to stir up trouble, especially after the young’uns started coming. Bobo plowed and planted Mama’s garden, later helping get the peas picked and corn cut. Except for the few days he spent plowing, and cutting firewood, he fished and hunted every day. He happily peddled watermelons and turnip greens out of his old ’49 Ford Truck. They never ran short of game or fish. Sometimes he’d help a neighbor butcher a beef or hog, bringing in extra meat. He wasn’t averse to helping family with a little painting or carpentry work from time to time, as long as it was understood that his labor included a few days’s hospitality for his family. He kept Mama’s freezer full. That along with Mama’s chickens and eggs, the cow’s milk and butter kept them going just fine. Getting clothes for the kids wasn’t a challenge. Inez was the youngest of six spectacularly fertile sisters. Their cousin’s hand-me-downs were plentiful. All those little blonde tykes lined up in overalls year round was awe-inspiring. Most of the time, they wore shirts under their overalls in winter. Plenty of old tennis shoes lay casually around, should any of the kids decide they needed footwear. Some even had mates. Size wasn’t an issue. Should a shoe be too big, it worked fine to slide-style and let it flop. The kids weren’t partial to shoes anyway, unless they were picking around in a trash dump with old cans or broken glass. Strings were scarce, but I never noticed anybody complaining.

I loved it when Bobo, Inez, and the kids showed up. Mother wasn’t always so enthusiastic, figuring they had run out of groceries and needed a place to roost for a few days. They did seem more likely to show up in bad weather, when a warm house was helpful. Sometimes they’d stay a few days with this relative, a few with that one, moving one before the tension got too thick. Mother complained about relatives giving them gas money to help them down the road to their next hosts.  I know I saw her slip Inez a little of her grocery money once, after Daddy went to work.  They moved on.  We ate gravy and biscuits till Daddy got paid the next Thursday.

to be continued