Country Humor

Fighting words
By Jack S. Bray

Arguing with my neighbor, Harley, is like trying to change a fan belt with the motor running. Harley has an opinion—sometimes more than one—about everything, and he purely loves to argue.

“It keeps the mind limbered up,” Harley said one time, when I asked him why he contradicted whatever was said.

If that’s the case, Harley’s mind must be as limber as cooked spaghetti.
 
Back when Harley married Ruby, she didn’t like to argue all that much. But that didn’t faze Harley. He’d begin an argument about something and Ruby would just keep quiet.
 
For a while, Harley would argue one side of an issue all by himself, and then he’d switch to the other side, just to keep the dispute going. That was easier on his wife, but it began to wear Harley down. Ruby could see that trying to keep both sides of a fuss going was taking a toll on him, so she began to polish her debating skills and, after a while, she got good at it. Not as good as Harley, who had years more experience. But pretty good.
 
Except for the constant harangue they keep going both at home and away, Harley and Ruby are about the best neighbors anyone could wish for. If my wife comes down with the flu, Ruby shows up with a casserole and her famous peach cobbler. When I’m under the weather, Harley pitches in to do my chores—arguing about something the whole while. They are active in church and volunteer to deliver meals-on-wheels to shut-ins. They are good people, except for the little disputes they’d kept a constant fire under for more than 40 years.

Then, awhile back, something happened that changed Harley’s entire personality. He had a heart attack and had to have open-heart surgery. That experience understandably scared Harley badly and frightened his wife more than a little.

While they had him in the hospital, the doctors discovered that Harley’s blood pressure was running dangerously high. The heart surgeon told Harley that he needed to keep calm and quiet. He shouldn’t get too excited or too worked up, and above all, he should avoid arguments and spats of any kind.

Harley turned into the meekest, most agreeable guy you’d ever meet. He didn’t argue with anybody, not even with Ruby. But he began to sulk and pick at his food. Ruby worried more about the change in Harley’s temperament than about his heart.

“It’s like all the fire has gone out of him,” she told my wife. “I’m afraid he’s just going to sit there and nice himself to death.”

A few days after that, I went over to help Harley string a fence across his lower pasture. He just sort of moped around, agreeing with everything I said—it was discouraging, considering Harley’s history up until now.

Almost against my better judgment, I decided to try to re-kindle a cantankerous spark in my neighbor. I was half afraid that Harley might get mad and keel over on the spot, but I lunged ahead.

“Where’d you get that bottle-headed bull—at the auction barn?” I asked, pointing at Harley’s newest herd sire. I knew Harley had paid a lot of money for the bull and was proud of him.

His eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared. Harley’s, I mean. The bull didn’t change expression.

“If I was you, I wouldn’t criticize anybody else’s breeding stock,” he retorted. “That bull you went all the way to Lawrence County to buy don’t have enough meat on his hind end to flavor soup. Why, I could…”

I left Harley standing there sputtering and went to get another armload of posts from the pickup. Harley didn’t gasp or clutch his chest and by the time I got back with the fence posts, he was casting aspersions on my bull’s ancestry.

My shock treatment worked. The old Harley was back.


I call it unAmerican
By Mitch Jayne

What a whole lot of people wonder these days is just who, in whatever country, came up with the idea of people having yards, or lawns—or the responsibility of mowing either one? Did people once just let the grass grow however high it wanted to, or did we all decide at once that it needed to be short to please somebody?

I took this question on a few years ago, when I discovered that lawn mowing was a competitive sport in small towns. Kind of like the “whet-banter” of old time harvesters, who would rattle their long whetstones on the scythe to challenge other haymakers to keep up. I never minded the small town challenge of who could mow the most, and I like bantering with neighbors as much as anyone, but I wondered: what was the crop we were fussing over?

It turns out, Americans didn’t invent the lawn mower, bless our hearts. That was a British invention, but what we did was make lawns open to inspection by neighbors, which was a lot worse. The Brits were fond of walled-in yards they called “gardens” and kept their clipped grass showplaces to themselves. In America, though, one yard joins another and whichever one is neatest causes instant competition.

Most of us are good-natured about this and just roar around our yards with the biggest machinery we can afford (sort of like the way we drive) and settle for out-fertilizing and out-watering each other.

Now, comes the main question: Once the yard is a lawn with grass as neat and disciplined and free of unwanted growing things as a marine crew cut, what do we do with it? The English play croquet, bowl or put up badminton nets on theirs and hold “garden” parties, but not many Americans are attracted to this kind of stuff. We’re more inclined to horseshoes, outdoor barbecues and noisy jig dancing on a platform—done to a Bluegrass band.

So why all this incessant close-cropped mowing here in the country’s heartland, where the tall grass prairie used to be? What got into us to make every house-yard a little emerald isle of close-cut grassy perfection rivaling a putting green?

I’m sorry to tell you that it was an American—a Yankee named Frederick Olmstead—who designed Chicago’s suburbs after the War Between the States and whose ideas about town lawns spread like wildfire. Fred was determined that everybody’s yard should look alike and declared that people whose yards looked rangy were “selfish, undemocratic and un-neighborly” and for emphasis added, “unChristian.”

Well, I don’t know about you, but hearing about this Yankee has done it for me. From now on, my lawn will only be mowed to keep the chiggers down and maybe because I don’t like my wife walking through tall grass to hang up laundry or don’t want ticks taking the place. But get this, Fred, I’ll get someone else to mow it!


One chance to see Uncle Heavy
By Cecil Bax

Everyone has a plan they will execute when they finally happen upon a time machine. Some would play the stock market or pick World Series teams. Others would aim to meet someone famous. Other than presenting my parents with a better-prepared argument about the importance of late-night social networking, I only have one plan for my time machine. I want to go to the 1964 Missouri State Fair. Here’s the grandstand lineup:
 
Sheb Wooley, co-star of TV’s “Rawhide”; Larry Hooper, Lawrence Welk Show singer; The Zacchini – human cannonball, shot from the mouth of a gigantic cannon 130 feet Miss Liane, trapeze artist; Alex & Dita, brilliant dancers from Hungary; Silvers Johnson, tramp clown; The Staneks, performance on the teeterboard; Uncle Heavy and his Pork Chop Review, comedy by trained hogs; Master of Ceremonies, Bob Barret, direct from the Sands Hotel.

Oh the glory! The Sands was still cool (was still there). Lawrence Welk still flaunted his Nordic white-bread television entertainment monopoly and pigs got laughs instead of rescued. Trapeze and tramp clowns? Come and get me, Marty, Doc. We can go back to the future soon enough.

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