Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days

     So the Fourth of July has passed and we are now in full summer.  (Not for us old-timers this modern custom of beginning summer with memorial Day weekend.  Summer isn’t fully underway until we start seeing watermelon and corn on the cob in the grocery…yeah, I know they’re there all year round now, but you could have let me indulge my recollections at LEAST until the second paragraph.  Whose blog do you think this is?)

     The origin of the concept of the summer vacation is lost in the mists of time, but those of our ancestors who had the money understood well the appeal of living one place in the cold of winter and somewhere else in the heat of summer.  Royalty had their winter palaces, and society had their homes in the country.  And for the lower classes, temporary residence in a quiet, restful spot was available at least by the middle of the nineteenth century.  (One of the earliest surviving obscene sound recordings, from the 1880s, deals with an old joke about a vacation cottage developer.)

     Along with this custom of getting away during the sweaty months came a realization (as in the joke mentioned above) about the gap between expectations and reality.  Postcards detailing exactly HOW much fun it was to get away from your house to the lake or beach abounded in the 1950s, and covered as many joys as possible, a handful of which can be seen here.

     Sunburn was especially a feature of such celebrations after the turn of midcentury.  Women had to wait for the change of fashions  As the makers of parasols to keep the sun off Milady’s delicate complexion started to go bankrupt, makers of sunburn lotions and home remedies intended for a similar purpose experienced a boom.

     Men, and indeed women, had been experiencing sunburn for centuries, of course, but it required the twentieth century to observe that it seemed to be obligatory to go out in search of it at certain times of year.  The change of fashion helped, too, as it gave postcard artists another excuse to portray women in skimpier attire.

     But the whole family of man understood about mosquitoes from an early age.  Early in the twentieth century, cartoonists made it clear that these bloodsuckers were waiting for your vacation time as eagetrly as you were.

     And just like you, went through a whole pre-vacation period of planning for the big occasion, making sure everything was set and ready.

     Travelers who wanted to describe a vacation not only bragged about the size of the fish that were caught, but the size of the mosquito that caught THEM.

     Literature is filled with fine old jokes (I know you didn’t get an old joke quiz this week because of the holiday, so this will have to do) about the mosquitoes the size of a horse who carried away tourists telling each other, “Yeah,. I hate these type O guys too, but just take what you can get before the BIG guys come and take ‘em all.”

     In spite of all of this,. However, people stuck to their vacation spots (or simply couldn’t get past the sentries to get home.)

By Two and Two

     No, thank you for asking, we have not quite covered every aspect of alcohol as examined in the postcards of yesteryear.

     Our relationship with the juice of the barley is complex.  The traditions brought by European immigrants were divided along a north-south boundary between southern cultures from warm climates, who drank to loosen tight nerves and enhance conversation and festivity, and colder, northern regions, where the object was to get as plastered as possible and snooze one’s way through a long, hard winter.  (A little broken furniture or noses before unconsciousness was considered collateral damage.)  The first settlers to cross the sea were also divided between those who wanted to live a life of denial of physical pleasures and party animals who had to be reminded that it would be necessary to do actual labor to survive.  And you wonder why our political spectrum gets so extreme.

     Publishers of humorous postcards did not aim a lot of product at the militantly sober.  (Publishers of religious postcards, too, tended to emphasize joy, or, when considering misery, showed how religion provided comfort.)  The vast majority, like this pop song reference of the nineteen-aughts, tended to show convivial companionship.

     This one, a pop literature reference, might mock the lads for getting drunk, but the reader was free to interpret this as reprobates who weakly gave into a craving for alcohol, or lightweights who just couldn’;t carry their liquor.

     And this group also bears the signs of over-indulgence which were frowned on by the sober: those sporty straw hats, the disarranged clothes, the difficulty of walking upright.

     But as a long story poem by Rudyard Kipling pointed out, the sins ye do by two and two, ye pay for one by one.  Sometimes the last chap pf a band of happy partiers, trying to wander home to home and wife, got a little mixed up and had to be helped to a temporary shelter.

     Even if they found reasonable accommodations on their own.

     For those who did make it home, of course, there was always the morning after that needed to be faced.

     Taking stock after a party might reveal startling physical changes.

     Or a general inventory might bring increased consciousness of the unpleasantries of returning sobriety.  (As another poet wrote of the dangers of the refilled cup, “to avoid hangovers, don’t sober up.”)

     The postcard world was not one for sending rebukes (except for failing to write postcards) but even cartoonists were willing to admit the rueful truths of life.

The Way to Go Home

     So far, we have had only a sip from the postcard world of alcohol imbibing.  There are many cards, for example, like the one above, which deal with the person who enjoys a simple glass of beer (or two) at the end of a long day.  Such cards show no signs of overindulgence, just the simple enjoyment of a touch of alcohol of an evening.  They are good-natured, benevolent, and not all that funny.

     We don’t really get laughs until the hero of the card has had a few.

     And a few more after that.  It is an attribute of the lead character on a postcard that no matter how far they are on the path to inebriation, they can still treat us to a pun.  (All together on the chorus now:  “Corn whiskey, corn whiskey, I like you pretty well.  You killed all my kinfolk and sent them to….where were we?)

     Not that our protagonist would overindulge, of course: not in the prim and proper world of our ancestors and their postcards.  It’s just that, before our hero knows it, time has flown, and he must think about heading home, as in our Friday column.  (As long as there’s something left in the jug, however, the clock will nag for naught.)

     A person with some experience navigating the treacherous road to hearth and home knows where all the streetlights are along the way.  These are not only useful for charting a course, and possibly offering support en route, but also provide a place to pause and show the world how sober he is by pausing to light a cigar.  Our hero here is not the least bit over-lubricated, just momentarily confused as he tries to light the handle of his walking stick instead.

     This one should also not be insulted with the word “drunk”.  He is, in fact, doing very well walking during a major change in terrestrial geography.  (These things frequently happen after that sixth or seventh glass.)

     And we live in the days of benevolent government officials, who put up signs to help in getting our bearings.  They might, of course, make these a little more helpful by adding details the sober passersby never seem to need.

     If one is especially exhausted by the trek to one’s snug little bed, these markers offer something to read while one rests up.

     Our heroes keep their good humor to the last, of course, knowing that they are perfectly sober and capable of finding a way to the warm embrace of family.

     Unless someone else from the party tries to horn in, of course.  (Tell me.  Has this chap made it home to his private BATH or his private BERTH?  I’m sure that if I wait until morning to ask him, he won’t know what I’m talking about.)

The Best Medicine

     And here we are at the last Monday in the first half of the year.  We can look over the months of January through June and consider the joys of six more months of the joys of….okay, be that way.  Maybe I should have waited for the last Tuesday of June.

     In any case, it is time for another Old Joke Quiz and, at that. Another Old Joke Quiz about the world of Medicine.  No, I’m not sure why there were so many jokes in the book about doctors.  It may relate to my basic thesis about western human history, which started its joke campaign against doctors, lawyers, and priests some six or seven centuries ago.  These were men who spoke Latin, belonged to groups distinguished by higher learning and mysterious functions, and could send a layman through Hell, sometimes literally, in the case of the priests.

     But that can all wait for some day other than Monday.  We must get on with the Quiz.  Once again, the missing punchlines, which you can surely provide with a prescription, are tucked away below.

     J1.”Gentlemen,” said the professor to the medical students, “Here we have a patient who limps.  Examination shows that he has one leg longer than the other.  Mr. Bailey, what would you do in such a case?”

     “Hmmm,” said the student.  “I guess (          ).”

J2.”The doctor is here to see you.”

     “Tell him (          ).”

J3.Midway through a Broadway play, a man in the third row jumped up and shouted, “Is there a doctor in the house?  Is there a doctor in the house?”

     Action stopped onstage.  A man in a balcony rose and announced, “I am a physician.”

     The man who had shouted looked up at him.  “(         )”

J4.”I think I need glasses.  Ever since I turned sixty-four when I stand up, I see spots before my eyes!”

     “Hmmmm.  Have you seen your usual doctor?”

     “No.  (          )”

J5.”Have your eyes ever been checked?”

      “No.  (           )”

J6.”What do you charge to pull a tooth?”

     “Three hundred seventy-seven dollars.”

     “What?  For two minutes’ work?”

     “Well, if you prefer, (          )”

J7.”Open wide and say ‘Ahhh.’  Open wider, please.  Still wider…..”

     “Doc, (          )”

J8.Midge ran I into Barbie and said, “So how’s your Uncle Bart?”

     “Not good,” said barbie, “He’s been awfully sick for months.”

     “Tut tut,” said Midge, “Didn’t you see that study which proves ninety percent of all illness is caused by negative thoughts?  He just THINKS he’s sick.  You should tell him that.”

     A week later, Midge saw barbie at Louis Vuitton.  “So how’s your Uncle Bart nowadays?”

     “Not so good,” said barbie.  “Now (          )”

J9.My doctor told me I had to start living the straight and narrow life or die, and gave me a list of things I had to give up.  So the first week I cut out smoking.  The second week I have up drinking.  The third week I cut out dating.  The fourth week I cut out (          ).

     J10.”I just read an article that went into all the health hazards of smoking, that went into all the horrible long-term effects of nicotine addiction, and the poisons you inhale with all that smoke.  So I’m giving it up.”

     “You’re finally going to give up smoking!”

     “No.  (          )”

J11.”The best thing for you, Mr. Gotlots, would be to give up smoking and drinking, stop seeing that twenty year-old secretary of yours after hours, and lose about sixty pounds.”

     “Doc, (           )”

If any of these stumped you, I can give you the email address of a doctor; they always have all the ANSWERS.

     A1.U

D limp, too.

     A2/I’m too sick to see anybody

     A3.How do you like the show, Doc?

     A4.Only spots

     A5.Always blue

     A6.I can do it very slowly

     A7.If you’re getting in, I’m getting out

     A8.He thinks he’s dead

     A9.paper dolls

     A10.Reading.

     A11.I don’t deserve the best.  What’s second best?

You Didn’t Say When

     See, this guy walks out of a bar….

     The joke must be as old as the tavern: as long as there have been establishments outside the home where alcohol was served, stories have told of the epic journey to return home with diminished skills of judgement and navigation.  When we finally decipher the unknown languages of bygone millennia, we will no doubt find new versions of the same story.  And postcard artists could hardly resist the lure of the set-up.  Getting home to one’s wife after an enthusiastic evening of inebriation was fraught with possibilities.

     Realizing when you were home was the first challenge.  The gentleman above has declared :Mission Accomplished” way too soon.  He’s lucky at that: other postcard artists show their heroes tearfully embracing a policeman, glad to have made it home at last.

     Some lads were at least still sober enough to wonder whether they were at the right address, and, lacking GPS, have to check with their life partner about the address.

     The next challenge would be getting in to the house.  Exhausted, and trembling from the long hard walk home (it couldn’t be anything else), you might have trouble getting that key in the lock.  (Sherlock Holmes, somewhat before this postcard was printed, deduced a man’s addiction to alcohol from the number of scratches around the keyhole of a pocket watch, showing how many attempts it sometimes took to get the key into place.)

     Then we have the classic gag of trying to sneak into the house without waking the waiting wife.  Shoes (here worn with spats) must of course be removed, and naturally there are stairs, which will squeak at the most inopportune times.  (For many years, it was considered inelegant and even improper to have your bedroom on the first floor of your home.  Going upstairs to bed was taken for granted.)

     And of course the Waiting Wife could be relied upon to be a Waking Wife as well.  If that genius grant from the Macarthur Foundation ever comes through, perhaps I will study the choice of weapon by wives of different eras and regions.  This lady waits in her humble abode with a broom.

     While this one favors the fire irons.

     The rolling pin was favored by cartoonists of a later generation.  Inquiring minds will, once I have completed my monumental study, finally get an answer to the question of whether these ladies had a spare rolling pin for the kitchen, so the main pin would always be available upstairs in the bedroom.

     Of course, waiting in bed might be more comfortable for the Waking Wife.

     And there were always handy missiles to be thrown from there.  This husband is obviously a veteran.

     In any case, the Waiting Wife was so standard a theme in domestic comedy that some cartoonists advised young ladies engaged to be married to go into proper training for married life.

     It was ripe for parody as well.  Turnabout, after all, is fair play.

Say When

     Some philosophical soul once wrote, “The average American doesn’t want much.  Just more than enough.”

     This thought came to me as I was sorting through the postcards in inventory under the subject heading of “Drinking”.  I was expecting to see vast numbers of cards dealing with the struggle of the over-served drinker to find a way home, the fumblings of the tipsy gent to get into the house unobserved by his vigilant wife, and the logic used by a well-oiled partygoer to deal with pay phones, clocks, and cigars.  These were all present, along with the gent making himself comfortable in a gutter for the night and the tendency of alcohol to make people think they can sing.

     But the overwhelming source of humor, at least among the cross-section of postcard history represented by my inventory, deals with another facet of drinking entirely.  These cards are concerned with getting enough to drink in the first place.

     What constitutes “enough” is, of course, up to every individual.  For some, it may be a daily bottle of the right stuff.

     Or a daily glass.  But the majority suggest that though variety is the spice of life, quantity is what matters at the core of the question.

     In other countries (this one comes from England) this might have been considered a valid concern.

     But in the United States, where Prohibition came in to trouble cartoonists in the second generation of postcards, it quickly became a matter of abandoning mere bottles for barrels.  And to get these barrels, necessitated by dry laws at home, they had to travel north of the border.

     Or south.

     Others had to find their solace in dreams.

     Though there were warnings that overindulgence, even in dreams, could have effects on one’s work.

     Even after 1933, with the repeal of Prohibition, the drive for a god supply (a reserve, if you will) continued.

     With the barrel and the bottle providing an answer to the constant thirst for that elusive more than enough.

     And for decades to come, the postcard world would reflect that basic desire to be filled with…contentment.  (The question of littering would be saved for another day.)

Miscellaneous Mirth

     I have warned you before, and though that exigency is not imminent, I will remind you that we are running out of the old jokes with which I filled my joke quizbook back in the last century.  Once we have completed all of that, I will have to think of another way to brighten your Mondays.  (If you were fretting about it, I DID receive your little tribute, which you sent in gratitude.  The bomb squad hauled it away, but it’s the thought that counts, right?)

     Anyway, this is another collection of jokes made up of odds and ends of categories which don’t have enough elderly gags to fill a blog by themselves.  The answers for this assortment are tucked in at the end of the blog, where I know you won’t look because you are so familiar with these antique japes.

     J1.”Yes, we furnished this entire room with bargains we got with soap coupons.”

     “Are you going to do the other rooms the same way?”

     “Nop.  (          )”

J2.”I’d like a bar of that new, improved bath soap.”

“Yes, sir.  We have several varieties.  Do you want it scented?”

“No.  (         )”

     J3.”I need a nice, long book. I’m going on a trip and I expect to be sitting in airports for a while.”

     “Well, we have a good variety.  Here’s an old favorite, The Kentucky Cardinal.”

     “Oh, I don’t like religious novels.”

     “You don’t understand: the cardinal is a real bird.”

     “(          )”

J4.Bob walked into a country store while on vacation, and glanced at a kitten drinking milk out of a saucer.  He realized with some shock that the saucer was actually a cup plate of the late eighteenth century, with a value in four figures.  Not wanting to alert the ctore owner to his, he called, “Hello, sir!. What a cute kitten!  Would you consider selling me that kitten for a dollar?”

     The man glanced at the animal.  “I don’t know.  My daughter’s really attached to the critter.”

     “I’ll make it five,” Bob said, holding out the money.

     The proprietor reached out reluctantly.  “Well, all right, I guess.”

     Bob scooped up the kitten and reached for the saucer.  “Since the kitten’s used to drinking out of this, I’ll just take it along to make my place seem more like home.”

     “No thanks,” said the store owner.  “(          )”

J5.”Hey, you’re putting that saddle on backwards!”

“Huh! (          )”

     J6.Emmett and Garrett bought a pair of excellent horses, but had trouble remembering which was which.  They decided Garret should dock his horse’s tail, and then they’d know it wasn’t Emmett’s.  It worked, but one day Emmett’s horse got its tail caught in a gate, and the tails were the same length again.

     So Emmett decided he would cut a notch in his horse’s left ear, just big enough so they could tell the difference.  But it wasn’t a week before Garrett’s horse was grazing and ran into an irritable possum, and that possum bit the animal’s klett ear so it perfectly matched the other horse’s ear.

     They told their neigjbor about their problems, and the old farmer said, “Well, why don’t you measure ‘em?”

     This turned out to be just the thing.  They measured both horses and, sure enough, (          )

J7.”This is my new space shuttle.  I’m going to offer people rides into the sun.”

“The sun?  You’ll all burn up!”

“Oh, I’ve got that figured out.  (          )”

     J8.Buck was hauling his new grandfather clock out of the shop and bumped into a lady who was coming in.  She glared at him and snapped “(          )”

     I should probably ask YOU which of my books to serialize next on Mondays, since I know you have all the ANSWERS.

     A1.They’re full of soap.

     A2.I’ll take it with me.

     A3.I don’t care about his private life

     A4.From that one saucer, I’ve sold thirty-six kittens.

    A5.You don’t even know which direction I’;m going

     A6.The white horse was four inches taller than the black horse.

     A7.We’ll go at night!

     A8.Why don’t you just wear a wristwatch?

Dad Chores II

     Very well, you talked me into it.

     So many people admired those pictures of Dad working with the twins in the wee hours of the morning, and expressed curiosity about the postcards showing Dad pushing the baby carriage, that I will give in to your plaintive pleas and show you a selection of those.  (Why the teeming hordes don’t rush to online marketplaces to buy these lovable cards from me is one of the mysteries of the universe, right up there with why the key you just used finds its way to the bottom of your pocket by the time you need it again.)

     As always, the more babies involved to bedevil poor Pa, the funnier the scene is, even if the joke seems a bit obscure.  When this card came out, there were still plenty of sternwheelers (boats propelled by a big wheel at the back of the boat) vying for business with the more modern twin propellor boats.  (See, he’s propelling the twins by wheeling them from…oh, you got that.  Just checking.)

     This card copmes from Merrie olde England, where Blackpool is known for an amusement park where everyone can make merry.  Because the English DO these things, Blackpool’s big Ferris wheel was known as the Joy Wheel.  Note the joyful expression on Papa’s face.

     Children are a pricey proposition, costing a good deal more than buying and maintaining your own horses and carriage would have been.  There is a faint undercurrent here to suggest Daddy is thinking what he MIGHT have spent his money on if….

     This joke was still good when motorized conveyance became more common.

     The investment of time in proper parenting is also immense, but this card takes a (semi) positive angle on this.

     Let us all rise now and do honor to one of the most popular, most consistent, and most aged of all jokes visited upon expectant parents.  The number of postcards, greeting cards, toasts, and wrapping paper (not to mention texts and tweets and facebook posts) involving this simple wish is vast beyond the estimation of the mightiest computer.

     It has its own family tree, and numerous offspring, as in this card with a gloomier take.  (It is probably vile to suggest that the poor overworked father didn’t get that way by pushing carriages.  If you count the offspring trailing behind….)  A similar joke is extremely popular on postcards celebrating the payment of income tax.  (It’s the Little Things That Count.  Makes pushing the carriage seem a little more worthwhile.)

     But enough of this,.  Father’s Day is coming, and someone’s waiting to celebrate with you, Daddy.

Dad Chores

     Father’s Day was not much of an occasion among postcard publishers.  It started to be celebrated in the United States around 1910, which was right in the first Golden Age for postcards, but as a holiday it took a long while to catch on.  Predictably, like Mother’s Day, it didn’t really get a foothold until certain businessmen realized “Hey, we can SELL things on a holiday like that”, and once that started, well, there was even more resistance than before.  But the business interests eventually overcame the objections (the founder of Mother’s Day NEVER forgave them, though they were so grateful that some got together and paid her expenses in old age.)  Perhaps also predictably, it was the florists who really pushed Mother’s Day, and necktie manufacturers who were behind the acceptance of father’s Day.

     But if the postcards don’t reflect the holiday, publishers were not blind to the existence of mothers and fathers.  Like children, parents serve a number of roles, and it is with one of the major roles of fathers we are going to occupy ourselves today.  The spanking of children, which we will discuss some time I want to get arrested, was handled, in a majority of cards, by mothers, with teachers and fathers coming in a distant second.  Pushing babies in buggies or strollers seems to have been assigned primarily to fathers, though mothers take it up more and more as the twentieth century goes on.  Puns involving baby carriages form a significant subgenre.

     But for sheer comedic value, the postcard publishers adored the hapless father trying to calm a crying baby.  This is an extension of the “male hopeless at domestic chores” theme in comedy, which goes back to the Middle Ages.  It is clear, in these cases, that Dad felt his role in raising children should be limited to encouraging his wife and delivering useful and educational homilies to the tykes once they were old enough to talk.  He has no idea what to do with them when they’re just old enough to squawk.

     It is clear in some cases that Papa had no idea he was signing up for this duty.

     The theme they liked best, though, was Dad taking care of his infant progeny in the middle of the night, preferably in a scene which shows his mother fast asleep.

     Even if Mom was a female impersonator (found especially in British treatments of the theme), hapless Dad gets the job in the middle of the night so Mom can do it all day tomorrow while he escapes to the office.

     In a remarkable number of cases, the cartoonist has made things even more entertaining by saddling Daddy with twins.  I doubt that multiple births were any more common then than they are today: it weas just funnier to see Daddy with his arms full, assailed from both sides.  (There are also numerous cards in which a new father, greeting his infant offspring, is dismayed to find his wife has presented him with triplets.  But that’s a whole nother blog.)

     We are invited to sympathize, if we like, or simply guffaw at Pop, whose has given up the joys of staying up late as a bachelor to stay up late with his twins.

     This chap, for example, is making a reference to his days in the army as he exhibits the thrilling exploits demanded of Pappy: balancing two bawling infants while warming their formula over a small heater in the bedroom.  It is clear that if you asked him about it right now, he’d say the Army was easier.

     In the end, however, it is all regarded as just one of the minor hardships in the great work of creating offspring who will carry on your lineage, your legacy, and, well, your looks.  (Study these twins: they have clearly inherited their father’s face, even to his middle-aged receding hairline and paternal scowl.)

     Here’s to all those Fathers out there!  May you get really nice neckties from the twins.

Office Supply

     Here it is Monday, and I’m thinking of Tuesdays.  For reasons I could no doubt Google but would prefer to make up myself, Tuesdays are the traditional days for elections.  Many states are holding their primaries this month, a secondary sort of election.  All of which makes a convenient lead-up to today’s Old Joke Quiz, which comes from the chapter on Political Jokes.  See if you can recollect the punchlines of these aged bits of political humor.  If you can’t come up with an answer, so investigative team will be required, as the answers are appended below.

     J1.The postmaster opened a letter addressed merely “God” and found a message from a small boy, who wrote “God, Dad lost his job, and Mom needs an operation, and we need a hundred dollars real fast or we’ll get thrown out of this house.”  He forwarded the letter to his supervisor in Washington, D.C., who was moved to pass it along up the ladder until it reached the Postmaster general, who was so touched by the missive that he shoved a ten dollar bill into an envelope and sent it to the return address on the envelope.

     Not long after, the postmaster in the small town found another envelope addressed to God.  He opened it and read, “Dear God, thanks for the money  Next time, though, (          ).”

     J2.”Don’t go in there.  Congressman O’Brien’s been talking for an hour now.”

     “What about?”

     “(          )”

J3.”Sir, we’re raising money to pay for the funeral and a suitable tomb marker for Senator Cassidy.  Would you donate ten dollars to bury a Senatir?”

“Here’s a hundred bucks.  (          )”

     J4.”Under the new government we will create,” cried the soapbox orator, “All citizens will be able every day to eat strawberries and cream!”

     A heckler shouted, “I don’t like strawberries!”

     The speaker called back, “Under our government, Comrade, (          )”

J5.During the campaign, Ed :Rooster” Townsend was pushing his record as a successful businessman, claiming that anyone who had made as much money as he had was bound to know how to run a state.  During the debate, his opponent, Ebenezer Terwilliger, allowed as how Townsend was indeed rich.  “But there’s only one honest way to make that much money!”

     Rooster Townsend leaned up to the microphone and said, “What is it?”

     “Right,” said Terwilliger, “(           )”

J6.Rooster Johnson toured the state on his campaign, and in one city, he ran across a stand where a boy was selling puppies.  “What kind of puppies are those?” he asked.

     “Republican puppies,” said the boy.

     Rooster was pleased enough to hand the boy a dime.  Coming back to the city a few days later, he passed the stand again with one of his campaign workers, and said, “Listen to this.”  He stepped up to the stand and said “What kind of puppies do you have for sale?”

     “Democratic puppies,” the boy said.

     Rooster frowned upon him.  “Son, just a few days ago, you told me these were Republican puppies.  Why are the Democratic puppies now?”

     “Well, sir, (          )”

J7.Ebenezer Terwilliger, meanwhile, was also moving around the state, interviewing votes, and asked one prosperous man whether he’d like to support the Terwilliger cause.  “No, sir,” was the answer, “I like your looks, but I’ve always voted Republican.  My father voted Republican, and my grandfather voted Republican.”

     “Huh,” Terwilliger replied, “If your grandfather was an idiot, and your father was an idiot, does that mean you’d have to be an idiot?”

     “No, sir,” said the man, “I’d be (          ).”

J8.When the election was held, the winner called his father to say, “Well, Dad, I won!”

     His father was overjoyed.  “Honestly?”

     “Dad, (          ).”

Here, according to my own personal investigation, are the ANSWERS

     A1.Don’t send the money through Washington.  Those bozos took ninety percent!

     A2.He hasn’t said.

     A3.Bury ten.

     A4.You will eat strawberries and like them!

     A5.I was sure you wouldn’t know.

     A6.Now they’ve got their eyes open.

     A7.a Democrat.

     A8.Why bring that up?