Back to the Cornfield

     Ah, here comes Monday once again, the day when people wake with foreboding to face the daily commute on a crowded thoroughfare or smelly train to get to the office.  Don’t you wish you could drop it all and set up shop in rural America, where a person can WALK to the office (through the rain or snow or hundred degree temperatures).  Of course, the farmer has no commute at all, since the office is there the minute the eyes are open (or even before, dang that rooster.)

     Our old Joke Quiz this week takes us back to the country, where, by the way, these jokes are just as old as they are in the city.  The ANSWERS, which you surely don’t need, will be down at the bottom of this compost heap.

J1.The Agricultural Extension man had come to visit Farmer Jenkins’s place.  “I notice you still let your pigs roam free to forage for roots and plants.  Don’t you know that if you confined them to a lot and fed them regularly on the newest feed, they’d be ready for market in half the time.

     The farmer shrugged.  “Well, mister, (          )?”

J2.”How much milk do your cows give?”

     “(          )”

J3.The small town’s council was considering the purchase of a grand chandelier to put in the town’s main meeting hall.  The crusty old conservative member of course voted against it. 

“Useless expense,” he said, “Nobody in this town (          ).”

J4.He was also the roadblock when a proposal was brought forward to buy six gondolas for the water park the town was thinking of setting up.  “Save money,” he said.  “Just buy two, and (      ).”

     J5.”Is that your flock of cows, Mister?”

     “Not flock.  Herd.”

     “Herd what?”

     “Herd of cows.”

     “Well, (          )”

J6.”Mister Farmer,” said the tourist from the city.  “How come that cow over there doesn’t have any horns?”

     “Well, there are plenty of reasons a cow might not have horns,” said the farmer.  “Sometimes an animal is so aggressive, we have to remove the horns to keep peace in the field.  Sometimes, for reasons the experts are still working on, the horns never grow in in the first place.  Sometimes there’s a fight or an accident and one horn gets broken off, and we have to remove the other so the cow doesn’t have to live with its head to one side.  Now, the reason that particular cow doesn’t have horns is (          ).”

     J7.A lady from the city was picking berries and wandered a little too far into a field.  She spotted the bull glaring at her at the same time she saw the farmer leaning on a fence, and called to him.  “Is that bull safe?”

     “Oh, yes,” said the farmer.  “(          ).”

J8.Another tourist at another farm watched over the fence as the rural mail carrier came dashing across the field, an angry bull in hot pursuit.  The mail carrier was breathing hard, and the bull was obviously catching up.  Just when it seemed the man was a goner, he jumped up on a rock and took a headlong leap over the fence, landing in a gully filled with water as the bull snorted and fumed.

     “He nearly got you that time,” said the tourist, helping the man out of the water.

     “Oh yes,” said the mail carrier.  “(          ).”

J9.”How come you never came around to close the deal on that horse you were going to sell me.”

     “Oh, (          ).”

J10.A tourist was working on his car on a lonely road in the country.  It had sputtered to a stop and wouldn’t start again.  He tried a few elementary things and tried the ignition after each one, to no avail.  He was bending over the engine for the fifth time when someone said, “Sounds like your transmission.”

     The tourist grunted and turned around.  To his surprise, there was no one to be seen.  A horse was looking over the fence, but that was it.  “I don’t suppose that was you,” he said.

     “Who else?” said the horse.  “It really sounds to me like it’s your transmission.”

     The tourist yelled and ran as fast as he could up the road until he came across a farmer at a gate.  The panting tourist pointed behind himself.  “There…there’s a horse back there!”

     “Got lots of horses,” said the farmer, a little surprised at the observation.

     “No, but listen.  My car stalled, and this horse comes up to the fence and says it’;s my transmission!”

     “Brown horse?  About yea high, white stripe between his eyes?”

     “That’s the one!  Do you know about him?”

     The farmer shrugged.  “Never mind about him.  (          ).”

Of course, like the farmers above, you know all the ANSWERS, but here they are anyhow.

     A1What’s time to a hog?

     A2/None.  We have to taske it away from them.

     A3.knows how to play the darn thing

     A4.and let them breed

     A5.Of course I’ve heard of cows!

     A6.It happens to be a horse

     A7.A darn sight safer than you are

     A8.He nearly gets me every time

     A9.He got well

     A10.He doesn’t know the first thing about cars

My Room Marked With Y

     Not long ago, I mentioned in this space the way some people will go on vacation and, far from being grateful, spend the whole time complaining.  I will excuse the numerous postcards which complain either a) that the vacation never seems long enough or b) that you need another vacation to recover from the effects of the first vacation.  These are basic truths of life.

     I’m thinking of the people who are able to get away on vacation and cannot seem to find anything nice to say.  If it rains the whole two weeks, why, it’s true, as the feller at the hotel’s front desk notes, that the crops really needed it.  And if you are snowed in at the ski lodge,. Well then, as the hotel desk clerk points out, you shouldn’t have tried to come skiing in the winter.  They don’t have those problems in July.

     In fact, the poor folks who run hotels get a lot of grief from the postcard manufacturers, who knew that people on their vacation love to pass along criticism of their accommodations.  Nowadays, we do that sort of thing through the Interwebs, but once upon a time, you went to a rack in the hotel gift shop to buy a postcard explaining how rotten your hotel was.

     And it’s not so much that a hotel is BAD, necessarily, as that your expectations are too high.  Sometimes a hotel visitor can be completely unreasonable.  Take the refined gent in the postcard at the top here.  If that towel was clean enough for the last two dozen men who used it, why should HE complain?  He expects too much.

     Most hotels of the time were designed to provide the most up-to-date comforts of home to the guests.  Here is a typical room with a lot of space, a simple and unaffected décor, and loads of amenities (the chamberpot is provided; he didn’t have to bring his own from home.)

     If some people read the advertisement and choose to read “near the sea” instead of what’s actually written, does this give them a right to complain?  I think not.

     A bed for the night is a bed for the night, after all.

     And if the local entertainers are too exciting for you to get much sleep, whose fault is that?

     One of the most common complaints, especially at really popular places (and particularly true in the cities during World War II) was that the hotels were fully booked, and there wasn’t much space.  Dozens of postcards complain about this, and yet the people shown could generally find a place, even if it was only semi-private sometimes.

     Or possibly less private than that.  This was a very common arrangement in hotels and inns in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, so travelers were being allowed to experience travel (and social networking) the way their grandparents did.

     Every hotel has spaces which can be opened up to guests in times of real emergency.

     Though, as postcard after postcard pointed out, even those spaces needed to be booked in advance, as they might sell out quickly.

     As travel writers have pointed out, travel is meant to be an adventure, not just more of the same.  If all you want is the comforts of home and a handy Burger King or Wendy’s, why, you can always stay home.  (Postcards never say that, though.  If all these people stayed at home, who’d buy the postcards?)

Pick of the Litter

     I suppose someone out there in the world of postcards knows a whole lot more than I was able to learn about Vincent V. Colby, an artist responsible for a LOT of postcards in the 1910s or thereabouts.  Anybody with this body of distinctive work must have had a fan who dug out information about his life, but whoever that person is has not yet posted it and what I could find on the Interwebs was discouragingly small.  I hate it when geniuses are forgotten.  It gives me doubts about my own legacy.

     I suppose there’s a good chance that he is the same Vincent Colby I have found on a number of art sites as a landscape painter who was active in the Southwest around 1912.  It seems certain that he is the same man who did a few jobs for Bray productions and their early animated cartoons.  Imdb gives him credit for directing two cartoons: I Should Worry (did he do any of THOSE postcards?) and, more importantly for our meanderings today, Seven Cutey Pups (or Seven Cutey Puppies.)

     See, Mr. Colby was an artist of dogs, or, more specifically, puppies.  Especially one little white puppy with black ears, who is bold enough to proposition you (as seen above) but also timid enough to admit he doesn’t like dark nights. (below.)

     The timid side of the puppy was the cute one (the one that sold) and he must have produced dozens of pictures of this particular puppy trembling on the brink of some new crisis.  It wasn’t that M<r. Colby COULDN’T draw grown-up dogs.  He just saved that for special occasions, to act as straight man to his puppy’s comedy.

     He did sometimes draw postcards featuring just children, but a child with a puppy in the picture fit his line more particularly.

     And he could draw other animals.  (If he IS the Vincent Colby active in the Southwest, there is a World War I food production poster he did featuring cows and pigs.)  This led to one of the puppy’s dark secrets: his mad crush on a member of another species.

     This romance had its ups and downs, and he recorded all of these.

     From time to time, a puppy of his made reference to current events, as this puppy did in 1909 when rival Polar explorers Cook and Peary were racing to the Pole.  Plenty of people who didn’t care about explorers at all just bought this card because it showed another one of Vincent Colby’s puppies.  These were becoming so popular that genuine Colby puppy postcards had his special monogram on the back.

     See, more than one artist could draw little bulldog/beagle puppies.  This example, as timid as a Colby puppy, shows no Colby signature nor Colby trademark.  If that weren’t enough of a hint, those ears don’t seem to have the Colby pizzazz.

     While this puppy, rather more bulldoggy in his loneliness, is under the copyright of A. Bklue.

     As is this fellow, who seems to have the same problem with his master or mistress having other interests in life.

     Cute puppies abounded on postcard racks throughout the nation, possibly more even than the omnipresent Dutch kids.  This artist, whom I call “Black Box” always has HIS puppy speaking in a well-defined box somewhere in the corner.  (There was another artist of this time who seems to have specialized in dogs wearing muzzles, but we can save that for another day.)

     While a Colby puppy is the gold standard for cute puppies in this era of postcards, other artists succeeded in putting canine cuteness on paper.  After all, puppies are eternal in their struggles, so like our own, to deal with the complexities of an existence they only kind of understand.

Doctor, Doctor

     Today, we find ourselves in the doctor’s waiting room, waiting for a laugh.  Ah, for the pre-pandemic days, when the waiting room might be filled with Reader’s Digest, Highlights for Children, and Boys’ Life, all magazines which included joke columns, helping to preserve the traditional gags of our nation!  Now we must rely on emails and Facebook posts.

     Speaking of which, any of these, with or without the punchlines which have been hidden in the ANSWER section, are guaranteed to be of ancient vintage and perfectly ripe for posting.  No, you don’t have to give me credit.  I’m in this for my health.

J1.Angus strolled into the doctor’s office and asked the receptionist, “What does the doctor charge for a visit?”

     “One hundred dollars for the first visit,”” she told him, “But twenty dollars for each subsequent visit.”

     Angus waited his turn and then moved back to the examination room.  “Hey, Doc!” he said, “(         )”

J2.”Doc, it hurts when I do this!”

      “Well, then, (          ).”

J3.”That cough of yours sounds much better today.”

     “It should, Doc.  (          ).”

J4.”Yes, your leg is a bit swollen but I’m not worried.”

     “Well, Doc, (          ).”

J5.Dr. Krankheit took out his stethoscope and applied it to Sheila’s chest.  “Cough, please.”  She obeyed.  “Now cough again.”  She did it again.  “Now cough once more.”  Sheila did as she was instructed.

     The doctor lowered the stethoscope.  “My goodness!  (          )”

J6.”You’re going to need to keep regular hours.”

     “But, Doc, I do that now!”

     “You told me you leave your office and go straight to the bar and keep drinking ‘til midnight!”

     “So?  (         )”

J7.Dr. Krankheit gave me six months to live.  I told him I couldn’t pay his bill.  So he (         ).

J8.”I’ll be honest, Ma’am.  I don’t like the way your husband looks.”

     “Well, Doc, (          ).”

J9.”And how are you today?”

     “Worse than ever, Doc.”

     “Have you been doing what I told you?  Drinking a glass of hot water an hour before breakfast?”

     “I tried, Doc.”

J10.”Dr. Krankheit’s office,” said the doctor into the phone, “Dr. Krankheit speaking.”

     “Hey, Doc!  Sorry I didn’t make my appointment today!  But I’;ve been running fifteen miles a day, just like you said, and I feel great.  Really great!”

     “Glad to hear it,” said the doctor.  “But why didn’t you come in for your appointment?”

     “Well, Doc, (          ).”

J11.”Doc, whatever’s wrong with me, don’t scare me to death with some long scientific name for it.  Just give me the news straight out.”

     “Well, your basic problem is you’re a lazy fat man.”

     “That’s a relief, Doc.  Now (          ).”

J12.”This is the worst cold I’ve ever had!”

     “What’re you taking for it?”

     “(          ).”

We don’t have to wait for results from the lab.  Here are your ANSWERS.

     A1.Here I am again!  (In the long version of this joke, the doctor glances at Angus and says “You look good to me.  Keep taking the same medicine.”

     A2.Don’t do that

     A3.I’ve been practicing all night

     A4.If it was your leg, I wouldn’t be worried, either

     A5.How long have you had that cough?

     A6.Those are my regular hours

     A7.he gave me another six months

     A8.neither do I, but he’s good with the children

     A9.I can’t keep it up for more than ten minutes

     A10.I’m six hundred miles from home

     A11.Now give me a long scientific name so I can tell the wife

     A12.Make me an offer

Number One Column

     There has been absolutely no call for equal time, but we did commit a modest oversight a few months back with a series of columns on what dogs do, and what babies do.  Although there was a brief examination of the possibility that cats also did such things, we may have given you the wrong idea about our ancestiors.

     Of course, our ancestors knew this was a universal activity.  Someday, when I am desperate for material to fill this space, I may discuss the different industrial uses found through the centuries for the oldest chemical compound discovered by humans.  It was used in laundry, in medicine, as a food additive…for that matter, it is still essential in a number of consumer products.

     But our ancestors were such prudes, as we are told over and over: people who refused to acknowledge the truths of life.  They wouldn’t have discussed such subjects in postcard illustrations, would they?  Not on things that would go through the mail with someone’s name on them.

     As mentioned before, it was okay if you discussed it in conjunction with babies.  Nanies didn’t know better, though this gentleman suggests otherwise.

     Even in a sacred setting, it was okay, if a baby was involved.  But grownups were, well, too grown up to be indiscreet and discuss such business on a postcard, right?

     This, of course, is a joke which goes back as far as fire hydrants and women who could see their shoes to tie them, since those long skirts and high button boots went out of style.  But this is essentially a joke about dogs and fire hydrants.  Men might sometimes be indiscreet, but a lady was far more conscious of the improprieties.

     Privacy was essential for the mature adult.  Even the truck drivers noted at the top of this column, almost certainly men, retreated behind a roadside sign.

     Ladies also knew enough to leave the seat down.  Men were another matter entirely.

     There was a camaraderie among men, and a more raucous sense of humor.  This card, published in Germany, shows an entire group enjoying the opportunity to, as the send of the card has written on the back, make sure the water level in the lake remains satisfactory.  This card was actually sent through the mail, from Huntington, New York, in 1911.  The recipient was male, and, of course, in those days, the postal delivery system was handled largely by men, so there was no chance of offending the fair sex with such a picture.  Women, especially American women, wouldn’t find this sort of thing funny.

     Um, this card was mailed in 1911 from Huntington, too.  And this card, you’ll notice, did not deal with vulgar foreigners.  Well, anyway, we have set the record straight on postcards and dogs and babies.

Drawers’ Choice

     Once upon a time, mackerel jellybeans, one had to be so careful what one said.  Every word had to be measured before uttered, lest it cause offense.  And there were people on the alert for these offenses, so they could point them out to you and cry out to the world that you were unfit for decent society.

     Well, no, I didn’t mean last week on the Interwebs.  I was talking about a hundred or so years ago.

     The dictionary tells me people have worn “pants” since the 1830s, but it wasn’t a word that was supposed to be in wide circulation among the polite.  It may have been its assumed derivation from pantaloons, which was derived from the name of a vulgar clown, or it may have been where they were worn and what they were covering.  “Breeches” was similarly considered rather low class, and one spoke, if one had to speak of the lower garments at all, of trousers, or even, if one were terribly careful, of “bifurcated garments” (garments which forked into two parts.)

     It was not until the 1920s, apparently, that people started to use words like “underpants”, while words like “smartypants” or “fancy-pants” had to wait for the jazzier 1930s.

     And yet, people wore them, and they did attract attention.  Sporty gentlemen, like the elegantly dressed soul above, mighty wear fancy pants indeed.  This was largely discouraged by the refined, except when, say, playing golf.  (A hundred years before that, of course, men thought nothing of walking through the streets in skintight butter-colored…maybe THAT’S why “Regency Dancing” is so popular at pop culture conventions.)

     More likely to be commented on in the 1910s, and even less often to be seen nowadays, were the patched trousers, something which marked the wearer as someone too poor or too cheap to throw away a torn or worn pair of trousers.  Oddly enough, a number of different postcard companies developed lines of repaired pants for sending good wishes to one’s friends.

     Here’s a typical example.  The patches are always on the seat (I used to wear pants until they fell apart, but they never developed holes in the seat.  I don’t know if this placement of patches is a comic stereotype or if I just wore reinforced pants) and the caption is laden with puns.  This goes for a trifecta: rent behind could be slow payments on one’s abode or tears in the seat, while a quarter could be a three-month period or a square of cloth.   Why you’re wishing someone luck by showing the seat of your pants and complaining about yours is a separate problem.

     This is a little heartier.  Black and White is a popular whiskey, so a complaint about winter becomes a little joke between drinking buddies.

     This artist did the same sort of thing, only with a tartan patch.

     Here we are going a little far to make the joke in verse.  This comes from the phrase that no matter how good someone’s luck or talent or intellect may be, it isn’t good enough to be a PATCH on yours.  (Note also that it seems to be a preference among these jokes to refuse to mention the garment in question at all, allowing you to figure out the joke on your own.  Yes, I COULD just have shown these pictures and not explained the text, but that sort of column wouldn’t be a patch on my…okay, okay.)

     So of course you got the joke here, from the use of “check” as an obstacle.  Vocabulary, however, is not the only joy of this study of vintage bifurcated garments.  Have you noticed the different designs of the waistbands, and how most of these patched pants come with a pair of suspenders?  What can we learn about our ancestors from this, Horseradish Éclair?  Did only gents wear belts?  Did men usually hang up their pants with the suspenders still attached (if you had only one pair of each, that makes sense.)  Or can we….

     Very well, we shall conclude with this card which at least shows how our language has changed.  If used on postcards later in the century, this first pun would have had one more meaning.

Show Me the Funny

     And here we are on President’s Day, a holiday observed primarily by government employees and mattress sales.  There are, of course, a number of holidays waiting for us: St. Patrick’s Day, Easter (cue the Cadbury Bunny commercial), the Vernal Equinox, but the most advertised holiday of all is coming in the middle of April.

     So, in anticipation of tax Day, the old joke quiz revisits the subject of money: saving it, spending it, and giving it away.  I am not paying for correct answers: we all know them and, anyhow, they’re at the bottom of the column.

     J1.Barney liked the hotel except for the way he was expected to tip for every little courtesy.  One afternoon, a knock on the door was followed by a call of “Telegram for you, sir.”

     Hoping to avoid the outstretched palm, Barney called back, “Slip it under the door.”

     “I can’t, sir,” came the reply.  “(          )”.

J2.A panhandler stopped me on the street and told me he hadn’t had a bite in weeks.  So (          ).

J3.”Can you spare a dime for a cup of coffee, sir?”

     “I suppose so.  Here’s your dime.”

     “Thank you, sir.  (          )”.

J4.”Can you spare twenty dollars for a cup of coffee?”

     “You can get a cup of coffee for a dime at that diner!”

     “I know, sir.  (          )”.

J5.”Can you spare ten thousand dollars for a cup of coffee?”

     “A cup of coffee doesn’t cost ten thousand dollars!”

     “It does, sir, if (          )”.

J6.”Say, young man, can you tell me how to get to the bank?”

     “I can for ten dollars.”

     “Ten dollars just to give me directions to the bank?”

     “Of course.  (          )”

J7.Barney didn’t know what kind of store he’d walked into until he saw a scarf he liked and asked the woman at the counter, “How much is this?”

     She glanced at it.  “Eight hundred dollars, sir.”

     He reached across the counter and took her wrist.  “And what is this?”

     She blinked.  “That’s my wrist, sir.”
     “Oh,” said barney, “(          ).”

J8.”You won’t co-sign my loan?  Hey, didn’t I lend you fifteen grand to keep you out of bankruptcy in 2002?  Who went bail for your two sons in that used car scam in 2010?  And didn’t I get you out of those grand larceny charges in 2012?  Don’t you remember all that?”

     “Oh, sure.  (          )?”

J9.”It’s beautiful.  But it would be a sin to pay that much for a hat!”

     “Well, Ma’am, (          )”.

J10.”I need a new swimsuit, and I’d like to try on that blue one in your window.”

     “Sorry, Ma’am.  (          )”.

J11.Danny was going through some boxes of papers and cancelled checks he’d shoved way back in the closet years before, and ran across a receipt for a pair of shoes he’d left at a local shoe repair shop before he went into the Army in 1976.  He checked online, and found to his amazement that the shop was still in business, so he took his receipt and drove over.

     With a shrug, he handed the receipt across the counter.  “I don’t suppose there’s any chance you remember this.”

     The man at the counter glanced over the piece of paper and opened a ledger on the counter.  “Brown Oxfords, sir?”

     “Why, yes!” said Danny.  “Don’t tell me you still have them!”

  .  The man nodded.  “(          )”.

Unlike the IRS, I do not penalize you for incorrect ANSWERS.

     A1.It’s on a tray

     A2.I bit him

     A3.And here’s your cup of coffee

     A4.I’m a heavy tipper

     A5.you go to Brazil for it

     A6.Bank directors always make a lot of money

     A7.Everything’s so high around here I thought it might be your neck

     A8.But what have you done for me lately?

     A9.The sin will be on your head

     A10.You’ll have to use a dressing room like everyone else

     A11.They’ll be ready a week from Tuesday

Vintage Whine

     I have called sending postcards the equivalent of texting or tweeting a century past.  (The very mention of texting and tweeting makes me seem a century old to numerous people who moved past those things ten years ago, but I can’t see a lot of them reading my blog.)  You could use a postcard to invite someone over for dinner that evening, arrange to be picked up at the train station, or just say “Hi!”

     So, of course, you could also use them to complain.  For those people who wanted to do so, some postcards were printed with the complaints already composed.  Mind you, the golden age of postcards was also one of those landmarks in positive motivational philosophers, and “kicking” (as complaining was popularly known) was a habit to be discouraged.

     Nowadays, if you’re not complaining, you’re not using social media to its fullest.  Posting (or reposting) complaints about anything from international politics to toenail fungus is practically your patriotic duty.  But once upon a time, such habits were heavily discouraged.  Which is what made them so attractive.

     It was an era when you were encouraged to get up and do things.  Working ennobled the soul, and the more sweat-inducing the labor, the better a person it made you.  The world didn’t owe you a living: you had to go out and squeeze money out of that world.  One or two folks, believe it or not, actually complained about this.

     It was different, of course, if you worked up to a leading role in your business.  If you were the CEO, you didn’t have to ask permission to work overtime, and make yourself even nobler.  There were people who complained about THAT.

     The American Dream, as it was called, was to work hard enough to be able to afford a home of your own, even if you had to go out and build it yourself.  Choosing the right spot to settle was, naturally, another source of complaint.

     Naturally, people who worked so hard had little time to send postcards.  Especially as we moved to mid-century, the people sending postcards were those enjoying a brief vacation from their labors.

     And yet, some of them just went on complaining.  Even if they got to get away from their humdrum homes and stay at a hotel, they complained.

     And if they went somewhere specifically because of the sunshine, they complained about it.

     However the weather worked out.

     People who work from dawn to dusk making themselves noble for minimum wage will sometimes just have too grand a set of expectations for their vacations.  And so they complain.

     Of course, there are things to complain about which are consistent whether you are at work or at play.  This one is fairly specific, and dates to an era when the telephone was becoming more widespread.  (This copy weas never sent to anyone.  By the way, who WOULD send a card like this?  And to whom?  Some other day we’ll talk about buying postcards to pin up on your bulletin board.)

     For some people, their life choices have brought them to a state of complaint.

     While others view what life has chosen for them, and complain about that.

     If you want my opinion, complaining is like a lot of other vices.  If you can do it in moderation, it’s actually good for you.  “Venting”, they called it in my younger days, and it was considered very healthy.  It has to be done correctly, however.  Just tossing out insults and calling names (what our ancestors called “knocking” something) will not do you as much good as a good complaint which states your case.  There were postcards to say so, so it must be true.

Hearts On the Plains

     The romance of the Old West was established well before the West had gotten that old.  Bill Nye, writing for the Boomerang in Cheyenne in the 1880s, liked to point out the difference between the West as it was lived and the West as people in the East liked to think of it.  The tenderfoot who arrived in town rigged out in “authentic” Western garb as supplied by a tailor in Newark was always a source of fun to the natives, while his version of the real life of the West was part of what made him one of the leading humorists of the day.  (He would start by pointing out that the average cowhand was more familiar with the handle of a hoe than with a handgun.)

     But the vision of the West, where men were men (and thus called “cowBOYS”) persisted, and postcards followed suit.  The cowboy above, for example, is found on a postcard of 1911, and sails somewhere on the fantasy side between reality and romance.  He’s had a shave recently, I see, and that shirt is mighty bright for something worn under the blazing western sun.  It was just the sort of thing people wanted to see, though, and the recipient, to judge by the back of the card, liked it well enough to paste it in a scrapbook.

     But if readers out East were hungry for details about cowboys, the appetite for cowgirls was ravenous.  It took a special kind of woman to head west, especially in those places where men outnumbered women by thirty or forty to one.  And how wild the Wild West was likely to get when Annabelle headed out for the wide open spaces kept writers of novels, pulp fiction, and postcards (and we must not neglect opera) profitably busy for decades.

     We have already covered this postcard evocation of the late nineteenth century love song Cheyenne, and how the cowboy begged his girlfriend, shy Anne (I still love that gag) to marry him.  Well, this was the direction taken by a multitude of novels of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: one stalwart man, one brave woman, love true and not to be denied by flood, fire, or marauder.

     Or you had the young couple facing the wilderness together, having found each other and decided that he was hers and she was his, and they were eaches.  This romantic vista comes courtesy of the cowboy painter poet (AND postcard publisher) Dude Larsen, who has called this “Dreaming” and has included, on the back of the card, a long poem of the same name .  This is pretty good, for postcard poetry, and tells of the young western couple looking forward to a life together in which their love will overcome hardships and preserve them from big cities with “their modernistic touch”.  Yes, even western writers had a touch of the dreamies when considering romance in the West.

     In more recent years, the fantasy has persisted.  Romance out west is just different.  You don’t see this in your modernistic big cities.  (Or do you?  You must go to better parties than I do.)

     Remember that this is, after all, The West, where men are men.  They know what they’re looking for.

     And the women…well, anybody can pick up a rope, after all.

     And as long as cowboy and cowgirl are happy about the result, who are we to comment?  Happy Valentine’s Day!  (Look, the time zones are different out west, too.  Or maybe I’m just really ready for 2023.)

All Rise

     I know it is Valentine’s Day, and I know that half of you had a really good Super Sunday (while the other half of you ran out of spinach dip in the third quarter.)  But it is Monday, and once again time for our Old Joke Quiz.  (Look at it this way: how will we ever finish with this unpublished book of joke quizzes unless we go through the jokes?)

     I find that this section of the Law and Crime jokes concerns almost solely jokes involving judges.  The judge joke was a staple of comedy just as thoroughly as the basic lawyer joke, and it is probably unnecessary to mention the “Her Comes De Judge”, which would get us into side issues involving The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Rowan and martin’s Laugh-In, Shorty Long, Pigmeat Markham, and enough material for six or seven blogs.

     So, as you eat your chocolates and leftover chicken wings, preparing to get out tomorrow and buy the half-price marshmallow hearts, be grateful you have only these jokes to deal with.

     J1.The judge glared down at the defendant.  “Have you been up before me before today?”

     “I don’t know, Your Honor,” said the defendant.  “(          )”

J2.”What brought you before this court?” the judge demanded.

     The defendant smiled.  “Two ;policemen.”

     The judge snorted.  “Drunk, as usual.”

     The defendant nodded.  “(          )”

J3.The judge thunder, “You have been brought here for drinking!”

     “Ah!” said the defendant.  “(          )”

J4.”Intoxication!” ruled the judge.  “Twenty dollars or twenty days!”

     “Well, Judge,” the defendant replied, “I think (          )”

J5.Down the hall, in another courtroom, the judge announced, “You are acquitted, sir.”

     The defendant frowned.  “Oh, ah….”

     The judge smiled.  “This means you are free to go.”

     “I see, Your Honor,” the defendant replied.  “So (          ).”

J6.In another courtroom, the judge intoned, “You have been found guilty, sir, and this court sentences you to ninety-nine years.”

     “Ninety-nine years!” cried the defendant.  “I don’t have ninety-nine years to live!  No one can do ninety-nine years!”

     The judge glared down at him.  “(          )”

J7.Yet another judge, farther down the hall, was demanding, “Couldn’t this case have been settled out of court?”

     The defendant shrugged.  “(          )”

J8.In divorce court, the judge announced, “This court finds for your wife, and awards her six thousand dollars a month in alimony.”

     The former husband nodded.  “That sounds really decent.  (          ).”

J9.”I was really worried about how the case would come out, but the judge awarded Jeffrey a suspended sentence.”

     “Let him go, huh?”

     “No.  (          ).”

J10.”This court has good news and bad news.  The good news is that your attorney has presented this court with irrefutable evidence.”

     “That’s great!  What’s the bad news.”

     “(          )”

J11.The fence between Heaven and Hell was getting worn down with so many failed attempts by the denizens of Hell to get out.  Though this was clearly the Devil’s fault, he refused to have anything to do with the repairs.

     “I’ll sure you for damages,” God told him.  “And you can’t win, since all the great judges are up here.”

     “Oh, yeah?” said the Devil.  “(          )”

If you should wind up in court one of these days, you’d better know all the ANSWERS.

     A1.What time do you get up?

     A2.Both of them

     A3.Let’s get started

     A4.I’d as soon have the twenty dollars

     A5.Do I get to keep the watch?

     A6.You can try, can’t you?

     A7.That’s what me and this bozo were trying to do when the cops grabbed us

     A8.And I’ll try to slip her a buck or two once in a while myself

     A9.Hanged him

     A10.It proves you’re guilty

     A11.Who do you think has all the lawyers?