7/27/2005 – Editorials

By Richard Peterson

Back in cowboy times, a westbound wagon train was lost and low on food. No other humans had been seen for days, and then the pioneers saw an old Norwegian sitting beneath a tree.
"Is there some place ahead where we can get food?" asked the trail boss.
"Vell, I tink so," the old man said, "but I wouldn’t go up dat hill und down de udder side. Somevun tole me you’d run into a big ‘bacon tree’."
"A bacon tree?" asked the wagon train leader.
"Yah, a bacon tree. Vould I lie? Trust me. I vouldn’t go dere."
The leader went back and told his people what the Norwegian said.
"So why did he say not to go there?" a person asked.
Other pioneers said, "Oh, you know those Norwegian people — they lie just for a joke."
So the wagon train goes up the hill and down the other side. Suddenly, Indians ambush them from everywhere and massacre all except the leader who manages to escape and get back to the old Norwegian.
Near dead, the man shouts, "You fool! You sent us to our deaths! We followed your route, but there was no bacon tree, just hundreds of Indians who killed everyone but me."
The old Norwegian man held up his hand and said, "Vait a minute." He quickly picks up an English-Norwegian dictionary and begins thumbing through it. "Uff-da, I made such a big mistake! It vuzn’t a bacon tree,

it vuz a ham bush."
—000—
Here are some differences between men and women, according to an enlightened man from India:
1. A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend. A successful woman is one who can find such a man.
2. Men wake up as good-looking as when they went to bed. Women somehow deteriorate during the night.
3. A man will pay $2 for a $1 item he wants. A woman will pay $1 for a $2 item that she doesn’t want.
4. A woman marries a man expecting he will change, but he doesn’t. A man marries a woman expecting that she won’t change, and she does.
5. There are two times when a man doesn’t understand a woman — before and after marriage.
6. A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband. A man never worries about the future until he gets a wife.
7. To be happy with a man, you must understand him a lot and love him a little. To be happy with a woman, you must love her a lot and not try to understand her at all.
8. Any married man should forget his mistakes. There’s no use in two people remembering the same thing!
9. A woman has the last word in any argument. Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument.
10. Women look at a wedding as the beginning of romance, while men look at a wedding as the ending of romance.
—000—
A Mafia Godfather finds out that his bookkeeper has taken him for $10 million. This bookkeeper is deaf. It was considered an occupational benefit, and why he got the job in the first place, since it was assumed that a deaf bookkeeper would not be able to hear anything he’d ever have to testify about in court.
When the Godfather goes to shake down the bookkeeper about his missing $10 million, he brings along his attorney, who knows sign language.
The Godfather asks the bookkeeper, "Where is the 10 million bucks you embezzled from me?"
The attorney, using sign language, asks the bookkeeper where the 10 million bucks is hidden. The bookkeeper signs back, "I don’t know what you are talking about."
The attorney tells the Godfather, "He says he doesn’t know what you’re talking about."
That’s when the Godfather pulls out a 9 mm pistol, puts it to the bookkeeper’s temple, cocks it, and asks, "Ask him again!"
The attorney signs to the bookkeeper, "He’ll kill you for sure if you don’t tell him."
The bookkeeper signs back, "OK! You win! The money is in a brown briefcase, buried behind the shed in my cousin Rocco’s back yard in Queens!"
The Godfather asks the attorney, "Well, what’d he say?"
The attorney replies, "He says you don’t have the guts to pull the trigger."
—000—
A man goes to a party and has too much to drink. His friends plead with him to let them take him home. He says no — he only lives a mile away. About five blocks from the party, the police pull him over for weaving and ask him to get out of the car and walk the line.
Just as he starts, the police radio blares out a notice of a robbery taking place in a house just a block away. The police tell the party animal to stay put, they will be right back and they hop a fence and run down the street to the robbery.
The guy waits and waits and finally decides to drive home. When he gets there, he tells his wife he is going to bed, and to tell anyone who might come looking for him that he has the flu and has been in bed all day.
A few hours later the police knock on the door. They ask if Mr. Joe is there and his wife says yes. They ask to see him and she replies that he is in bed with the flu and has been so all day.
The police have his driver’s license. They ask to see his car and she asks why. They insist on seeing his car, so she takes them to the garage. She opens the door. There sitting in the garage is the police car with all its lights still flashing.
(This is supposedly a true story, told by the driver at his first AA meeting in Jacksonville, Fla.)