The Paper • Page 2 • March 27, 2014
‘Old Man and the Deer’ Cont. from Page 1
than he needed--and simply giving them to folks who were on tough times. "Some o' them folks, yuh know, have kids," he said. "I was hungry when I was a kid sometimes. Guess I never forgot that..."
He picked up another stack of papers and began fiddling with them. "Kids will eat anything. You know that. You've raised them yerself. But I think it's kinda pitiful when they don't have no meat in the house." I wasn't aware that my angry facial expression had changed. But Steve took note of it. He knew I wasn't a hard man and that I loved kids.
He handed me an ashtray. "Yer gonna drop that ash on my kitchen floor and get me in trouble with Elsie if you ain't careful," he grinned. Then he pulled out a handwritten number from his old phone book. "Yup, here it is!" He tore off a corner from a newspaper and carefully wrote the number down for me. But before he slid it across the table, he continued...
"I ain't surprised you don't know the family that lives
Give Us This Day Our Daily Chuckle This week, a compendium of wit, wisdom and neat stuff you can tell at parties. Enjoy! Vern’s Funeral
Vern works hard at the Phone Company. He spends two nights each week bowling and plays golf every Saturday.
His wife thinks he's pushing himself too hard, so for his birthday she takes him to a local Strip club. The doorman at the club greets them and says, "Hey, Vern! How ya doin?" His wife is puzzled and asks if he's been to this club before.
"Oh no," says Vern. “He's in my bowling league.”
When they are seated, a waitress asks Vern if he'd like his usual and brings over a Budweiser. His wife is becom-
where you followed the blood trail. His name's Tom and his wife is named Katie. Katie got that Alzheimer's disease, yuh know. Tom works odd jobs when his daughter is handy to come over and watch her mom, but she cain't do that all the time. Married, got her own kids now. Tom and Kate are old folks. They pretty much live on Social Security now, 'cept when Tom can find a little work under the table, so to speak. Didja ever notice how much land Tom has? 'Bout a halfacre. Jest enough fer some fruit trees in his front yard and they don't have any back yard to speak of." He laughed. "Hell, YOU'RE their back yard. Didn't ya notice how close yer fence was to their house? I had, but in my anger I'd paid no attention to that fact. Hell, I didn't know how much land they owned. And I didn't care ... at least then. But now I was listening to Steve.
"Tom's got his hands pretty full taking care of Katie. Does all the dishwashin' and cookin' and laundry. His daughter helps when she can, but she lives awful far away. In the fall I take my ladder over and help him pick all the fruit off his trees. Damned if I can figger it out, but Katie still knows how
ing increasingly uncomfortable and says, "How did she know that you drink Budweiser?"
"I recognize her, she's the waitress from the golf club. I always have a Bud at the end of the 1st nine, honey." A stripper then comes over to their table, throws her arms around Vern, starts to rub herself all over him and says... "Hi Vern. Want your usual table dance, big boy?" Vern's wife, now furious, grabs her purse and storms out of the club. Vern follows and spots her getting into a cab. Before she can slam the door, he jumps in beside her.
Vern tries desperately to explain how the stripper must have mistaken him for someone else, but his wife is having none of it.
She is screaming at him at the top of her lungs, calling him every four-letter word in the book..
The cabby turns around and says, 'Geez Vern, you picked up a real bitch this time.' VERN'S FUNERAL WILL BE HELD THIS COMING FRIDAY.
to can fruit. She just goes about it like nobody's business. That's kinda odd, ain't it? Sometimes she even remembers my name, sometimes she don't, but she still smiles because somehow she remembers me and Elsie are their friends. Elsie makes them pies sometimes. Oh boy, do they like her pies!"
By this time, it had entered my thick skull that perhaps these people did not need the wrath of God dropped upon them. They had enough trouble as it was. My body posture had even changed. I was no longer angry. I was seeing an impoverished couple, one seriously ill, the other doing his best to care for his wife, and both elderly and dirt poor. The faint stirrings of guilt had even began to enter my mind. I was going to call the law on people like that? What kind of a jerk would do such a thing? Then it hit me--I would. Or at least would have, had I not talked with Steve. "Well, anyhow, here's yer number fer the Conservation Officer. Took me a little while to find it..." Steve pushed the scrap of paper across his kitchen table towards me. I did not pick it up.
I paused for a long moment, then said, "Steve, I was just sitting here thinking. According to the Department of Natural Resources, the deer that cross our land don't belong to us, but actually belong to the state. Is that right?" He nodded quietly.
I looked at the number laying in front of me on his old kitchen table. "There's been a lot of times in my life when I've been an ass, Steve. But I don't think this is going to be one of them. Thanks for talking with me." And I stood up to leave. Following me to his door, Steve tucked the telephone number into my pocket.
"Yuh know, one o' these days you might really need one of these guys. Take this home and stick it to that bulletin board you got in yer kitchen. But I think yer doin' the right thing about not using it right now. Tom's just doin' his best, Kent. He don't mean no harm. And hell, you got what? A hundred and fifty times the land he does? Or more? And besides, like you said, them ain't our deer anyways." Then he leaned towards me and said in a stage
‘Old Man and the Deer’ Cont. on Page 3
Punography
Why were the Indians here first? They had reservations.
When chemists die, they barium.
Energizer bunny arrested. Charged with battery.
Did you hear about the crosseyed teacher who lost her job because she couldn't control her pupils? Jokes about German sausage are the wurst.
A soldier who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran. I know a guy who's addicted to brake fluid. He says he can stop any time. How does Moses make his tea? Hebrews it.
I stayed up all night to see where the sun went. Then it dawned on me. This girl said she recognized me from the vegetarian club, but I'd never met herbivore. I'm reading a book about antigravity. I can't put it down.
I did a theatrical performance about puns . It was a play on words. They told me I had type A blood, but it was a Type-O.
PMS jokes aren't funny, period.
Class trip to the Coca-Cola factory. I hope there's no pop quiz. I didn't like my beard at first. Then it grew on me. When you get a bladder infection, urine trouble.
What does a clock do when it's hungry? It goes back four seconds.
I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me! Broken pencils are pointless.
What do you call a dinosaur with an extensive vocabulary? A thesaurus. England has no kidney bank, but it does have a Liverpool . I used to be a banker, but then I lost interest.
I dropped out of communism class because of lousy Marx.
All the toilets in New York 's police stations have been
‘Chuckles’ Cont. on Page 11