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The
other day, a fellow Baby Boomer with a lot of white on not much
hair, offered a compliment and then made it all the better with
a funny story that more memorably got his message across.
Not in his exact words, but here it is:
An idealistic young English teacher fresh out of college and full
of enthusiasm gets a job at a high school in a small Texas town
where football scores were better remembered than TAKS percentiles.
She drills her students relentlessly on proper grammar. Near the
end of the semester, seeking some feedback, she asked her class
if they felt that had learned anything.
No one raised their hand so she asked again, assuring them she wanted
their honest opinion of her teaching efforts.
Finally, a boy at the back raised his hand.
“Teacher,” he said, “you done good.”
Folks who are really good at conveying ideas and information often
do so through story-telling. And if those stories are funny, it’s
all the better.
Herewith a sampling of Texas humor
you can use to make your own points:
A
lynch mob is about to string up three cowboys for cattle rustling.
They select a mesquite on the bank of the Rio Grande that looks
big enough to hold up a body. When they knock the horse out from
under the first cowboy, he’s so sweaty the noose slips off him and
he falls in the river and swims off.
Same thing happens when the vigilantes try to hang to the second
rustler. When the third cowboy has been placed on a horse and the
noose adjusted around his neck, he asks if he can make a final statement.
They say sure, and he blurts out: “Just make sure that dang noose
is tight. I can’t swim!”
Judge
to drunk: “What’s your full name?”
Drunk to judge: “Same as it is when I ain’t full.”
Driving
through Texas, a Yankee tourist sees
a real, live cattle rancher and stops to talk. “What’s the name
of your spread?” he asks, trying to talk like a Texan.
“It’s the Bar Seven, Double O, Rocking J, Flying M,” replies the
rancher.
“I bet you have a lot of cattle,” the visitor replies, scanning
the landscape on the other side of the barbed wire fence.
“Nope,” replies the rancher, “Not too many of ‘em survive the branding.”
An
optimist and pessimist are out duck hunting on the marshes between
Port Arthur
and the Gulf of Mexico. The optimist, who owns the bird dog, knocks
down a mallard. The dog immediately climbs out of the boat, walks
across the water, picks up the duck, walks back to the boat and
climbs back in.
Soon another mallard sails low and the optimist nails it with equal
facility. Again, the dog climbs out of the boat, walks across the
water and brings back the duck. After a while, the optimist asks
the pessimist if he had noticed anything unusual about his bird
dog.
“Yeah,” the pessimist replies, “that dang dog can’t swim!”
A
Harvard graduate inherits a large ranch in West
Texas. Soon he discovers that someone is rustling his cattle.
Further investigation points to the culprit being his neighbor.
The Eastern-educated young man says he’s going to confront the adjoining
landowner, but a friend warns him that the old cuss might just shoot
him if he accused him of branding his calves.
Armed with that information, the aggrieved land owner opted to use
some of his education and culture and wrote the following note to
the suspected thief:
“Dear Sir: I’d very much appreciate it if you’d do me the favor
of not leaving your hot branding irons lying around where my careless
cattle can sit on them.”
A
cowboy on the old XIT
Ranch looked at his pay envelop and found that he had been shorted
$2. The waddy complained to the foreman, who reminded him that only
two weeks before, he had been overpaid by $2.
“Well,” the drover replied, “I was willing to overlook one mistake.
But when it happens two times in a row, I figure it’s time to say
something.”
© Mike Cox
"Texas Tales" May
6, 2010 column
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