My friend from Asbury, Mo, ol’ A.C. Doocey, recently got the strangest traffic ticket I’ve ever heard of.
A.C. has retired from part-time farming and as a part-time electrician and has gotten himself a new part-time job as a blackjack dealer at a close-by casino. He called me the other day and his end of the phone conversation went like this:
“Milo, the other day, I was on my way home from work when the strangest thing happened. Traffic was heavy as usual in Joplin, and as I sat at a red light, out of nowhere, a colorful little bird slammed into my windshield.
“If that wasn’t bad enough, the poor creature got its wing stuck under the windshield wiper. It wuz just flapping helplessly. Just then the light turned green, and there I was with a bird stuck on my windshield. I had to make a split-second decision and I decided to try and dislodge the poor bird by turning on the windshield wipers.
“And, to my surprise, it actually worked. On the upswing, the bird flew off, and here is the crazy thing — it slammed right onto the windshield of the car behind me. No, it didn’t get caught under the windshield wipers of that vehicle. It killed itself. And, unfortunately for me, the car behind me was a police car.
“Just more of my plain ol’ bad luck. Of course, immediately the officer turned on his emergency lights, and I was forced to pull over. The officer walked up and I could see him reaching for his ticket book.
“I tried to talk my way out of a ticket, but trying to plead my case fell on deaf ears.
“The officer simply stated, ‘Talking ain’t gonna do you no good. I’m going to have to write you up … for flipping me the bird.’”
***
A farm kid, who’d gained sales experience through his FFA chapter, went off to college and got himself a part-time sales job working in an upscale men’s clothing store.
The store owner showed the kid all the inventory and ended up showing him an extremely ugly sports coat. It had been in the store’s inventory for a year, and the owner explained that, if the kid could sell that sports coat, he’d prove his worth as a salesman, plus, earn himself half of whatever dollar amount he could sell the coat.
With that explanation, the owner went off for lunch and left the kid alone as the sole salesman in the story.
After his lunch, the owner returned to the store and his eyes fell on this scene. Clothes were scattered helter-skelter. He looked for the kid salesman and didn’t see him. He then heard someone groan and he hurried over the counter and saw the kid salesman laying on the floor all cut up and bruised and bloody.
“What in the world happened to you?” the owner asked.
The kid slowly got to his feet, groaned, but then broke into a smile and and pointed at the rack where that ugly sports coat had been. “I sold it,” the kid exclaimed. “For $200. So, you owe me a $100 bonus.”
The astounded owner saw the coat was actually gone. He shook his head in disbelief and asked, “You gotta tell me how you accomplished that sale? I’ve been trying for a year and never got anyone to take a serious look at it — let alone buy it! Now wait a minute! Don’t tell me that the guy you sold the coat to, hated it so much that he did this to you?”
The kid salesman then says, “Nope, the customer just loved the way the coat fit. However, his seeing eye dog almost killed me!”
***
I might as well continue in this far-out vein. A wealthy young Texas rancher wuz returning from a trip to Europe to evaluate some cattle he hoped to import. But, on his return trip, his plane got diverted to Boston overnight and he ended up enjoying an adult beverage at the crowded hotel bar.
He wuz sitting at the bar wearing his Stetson proudly when an attractive young lady sat down next to him and asked in her clipped feminine New England accent, “And, just where are you from, cowboy?”
The rancher tipped his hat and courteously replied, “Texas, ma’am. And where y’all from?
The lady answered softly back in the noisy bar, “Yale.”
The cowboy immediately rose to his feet, cupped his hands around his mouth, and at the top of his voice yelled, “Where ya’ll from, ma’am?”
***
Last week, I wrote about some ways a farmer or rancher can tell is he’s really old and experienced. Well, I’ve thought about some more delved up from childhood memories.
You know you’re an old experienced farmer if you can remember shocking “sorgo” at harvest, then in the winter going to the field with a wagon mounted with a guillotine blade and tearing down the shocks, cutting off the heads of sorgo with the blade, then grinding the heads for cattle, hog, or chicken feed and feeding the stalks and leaves as cattle fodder.
You know you’re an experienced farmer when you can recall days of yore in the summer when milk cows were milked by hand outside in the cow lot and never put into a stanchion in the barn. The cows were fed in a pan and stood contentedly eating while they were milked.
You are an experienced farmer or rancher if you still remember how to harness work horses.
***
Words of wisdom for the week: “Agriculture is a life-long lesson is patience. It takes months to grow a crop and 9-months to bring a calf to life.” Have a good ‘un.
