Oh, baby. We had a couple of days this week that made me believe that spring is tantalizing close. On those 60-70 degree days, I tilled up my garden plot with the fall turnips in it, plus I tilled gardens for two of my neighbors. On top of that, I used the tractor to aerate my two big compost piles — and the chickens loved scratching around in all that fresh dirt. And, before the weather turned for the worse, I even hauled a couple loads of trimmed tree branches to the ever-growing burn pile,
The pond ice is all melted, so my fishing fever is beginning to rise. Might have to give crappie fishing a try during the next brief warm-up.
***
At a nice modern farm home with a 2-car garage, early one evening the farmer went out to his garage and pulled the lawn furniture out onto the driveway. Shortly after, he followed that up with the lawn mower, a few gardening tools and a bicycle.
A neighbor pulled in for a visit and, out of curiosity, asked the farmer if he was going to have a garage sale.
“No,” replied the farmer, “My son just bought his first used pickup and right now he’s in the house getting all spiffed up for a big date.”
“So, what’s with dragging all that stuff out onto your garage pad?” asked the neighbor.
“Well, after years of moving tricycles, toys and sports equipment off the drive pad every time I came home from the field, I want to make sure the driveway is ready for him.”
***
It usually takes some time before a joke does what I call “recycle.” It used to be through word of mouth telling, but nowadays it’s through e-mails.
Well, it’s been seven or eight years since I quit entertaining rural audiences with standup gigs, but one of the old jokes I used (and it didn’t originate with me), recycled this week into my email box.
It’s good enuf to recycle as column material. If I’ve used it before, it’s been years ago. It goes like this:
There once was the unluckiest farmer still alive. As the result of unlucky farm accidents, the poor soul had to go through the rest of his life with an artificial leg, a hook on one arm, and a patch on one eye that had gotten poked out.
Since he wuz unable to do hard manual labor, the unluckiest farmer alive had to turn to traveling the country giving paid personal testimony speeches about what could happen to members of farm and ranch families if they did not routinely practice sound farm safety measures at all time.
For his first gig, he wuz hired by a prominent farm group in Kansas to give a farm safety speech at its annual convention, which coincided with National Farm Safety Week.
Naturally, the unlucky farmer was nervous as a cat with a long tail in a room full of rocking chairs as he took the podium. Nervously wiping the sweat from his brow, holding his handkerchief awkwardly in his hook-hand, he began by saying:
“This is my personal story. One day when I was combining corn, the combine plugged. So, I got off the tractor, grabbed a tight grip on a big pulley and tugged with all my might to get the combine running again. Well, it did, but I was thrown off-balance and stumbled forward and my arm got caught in the belt and it pulled through the pulley and slicked my hand and forearm off as cleanly as a cleaver. That’s why I now live with a hook for a hand.
“Now as for my artificial leg, one day I was working alone with the tractor pulling stumps from a steep hillside on our farm. I set the tractor emergency brake and dismounted to hook the log chain around the stump. Well, I didn’t do a good job and the tractor broke loose and came rolling down the hill and the drawbar crushed my leg against the stump. So, you might say that a stump caused my stump, but in reality, it was my carelessness that left me with an artificial leg.
“Now, as for the necessity of my wearing a patch over my left eye, that’s the saddest farm accident of all. One day I was pitchforking old, loose hay out of our hay mow in the barn. I was bent over with the pitchfork when I heard a fluttering commotion up in the peak of the hay mow. Instinctly, I looked up into a flock of pigeons and one of them unloaded a big squirt that landed squarely in my left eye.”
The unlucky farmer then closed his farm safety speech by saying, “I hope you’ve learned from my story the value of always practicing farm safety. Now, does anyone have a question?”
A farmer in the front row raised his hand and asked, “Sir. Thank you, I learned a lot. Here’s my question, how did you lose your eye just from a pigeon pooping in it?”
The world’s unluckiest farmer replied, “Oh, I forgot to mention it was the first day I had my hook.”
***
Well, since I dragged you that far into a farce, I’ll close for the week with these words of wisdom from church lawn signs. St. Mark’s Anglican Church’s sign reads, “Adam and Eve were the first people to not read the Apple terms and conditions.”
And from the Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church a sign that reads, “Too hot to keep changing this sign. Sin? Bad! Jesus? Good! Details inside.”
Keep those words in mind and have a good ‘un.
