A farmer plowed through the snow during the recent blizzard, but finally made it to his rural church. He wuz relieved to see that the preacher’s 4WD pickup was already in the church parking lot.
But, when he went into the church, he and the minister waited and waited until it was clear no one else in the congregation wuz going to make it for the church service
It wuz then the preacher asked the farmer if he wanted the minister to go ahead with the sermon. The rancher replied slowly, “Well, I’ve never been all that smart, but if I went out to feed the cattle and only one head showed up, I’d feed it. So, yep. Go ahead.”
So the preacher began his sermon. An hour passed, then 2, then 3. At last he finished and came down out of the pulpit and asked the farmer how he liked the sermon.
“Well, you know,” the farmer replied slowly, ‘I’m not all that smart, but if went to feed my cattle and only one head showed up, I sure wouldn’t feed it all the hay.”
***
It was a pretty sad day when the original owner of a farm decided to retire and turn the enterprise over to his son.
So, he sold the home he’d lived in for 75 years and got a furnished condo in a nearby city. After he’d had a few weeks to settle into his new digs, his son drove to visit him one weekend.
The son got a late start after choring and didn’t arrive to his Dad’s place until well after midnight. But, good ol’ Dad wuz glad to see him and poured both of them a good stiff drink.
When his son eventually asked the retiree how he liked retirement, the old man replied, “I don’t know why I didn’t move here years ago,” he said. “I never had a nice gas fireplace like this one. I never had a microwave or a big TV or the fancy little satellite dish, or a talking clock.”
“A talking clock?” the son questioned. “What clock are you talking about?”
His dad wuz happy to show him. He went into the kitchen, where he had some new pots and pans hung on a rack. He picked up a heavy spoon and started pounding away on at the bottom of a big pan.”
After five or six resounding hits, they both heard a voice say: “Hey, you ®#$¢&%! It’s 2:30 in the morning!”
***
One afternoon a driver wuz speeding down a high country valley road west of Denver in his Audi when he slammed into a small calf that jumped out of the road ditch after it had escaped its pasture.
The concerned driver, worrying about liability, carefully wrapped the calf up in his coat and rushed it to the nearby ranch house, but by then it was too late. The calf has expired. So, the driver asked the rancher what the calf was worth.
The quick-witted rancher replied, “Oh, as a newborn calf, about $500 today. But, it wuz a bull calf that I intended to sell in our purebred sale in 3 years and it would’a been worth about $5,000. So $5,000 is what I’m out.”
The Denver driver sat down, wrote out a check and handed it over. “OK, here’s a check for $5,000,” he said, … “postdated three years from now.”
***
Last weekend, my son-in-law, ol’ Harley Ryder, invited me to ride with him to town while he did some errands. I wuz eager to get out of the house after the blizzard, so I hopped in.
After he finished his errands, I told him to stop at a roadside bar and grill and we’d kill a little time and money on entertainment.
The entertainment I had in mind wuz playing the only pinball machine in the joint. Since I’ve been a pinball junkie since my days in high school, I challenged him.
When I looked what it cost, the price wuz one play for $1 or the bargain three plays for $2. I remarked that when I wuz a kid, it cost me 5-cents to play a game of pinball.
We played six games, and Harley’s relative youth and reflexes, beat me every game. But, I still had a lot of fun.
As we turned to leave, I said, “Well, I guess it’s safe to say that the ‘Pinball Inflation Index’ is now 20. A game costs 20 times more than it used to.”
Harley wryly, replied, “and so does everything else.”
***
Some Mother Nature happenings baffle me. Today wuz one of those happenings.
Since the blizzard, the high temperatures have been in teen and twenties and a song birds have flocked to our bird feeders every day without fail.
But, today, the temperatures have gone into melting range, the sun’s shining brightly, and nary a bird of any kind has come for feed or water all day. Not one! I have no idea why. Perhaps they’ll come again this evening. Or, maybe they’ve discovered a secret natural food source.
***
Words of wisdom for the week: “What do you call a perfect man? A rumor.”
And, “The car you need to pay the most attention to when driving is the car behind the car in front of you.”
Have a good ‘un.
