[374 words]
A none-too-alert motorist sat motionless behind the wheel of his car. The traffic signal changed from green to yellow to red and back to green again. Still he sat staring ahead. Whereupon a police officer approached the absentminded man and demanded: “Mister, don’t we have any colors you like?”
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There is a charming story concerning the noble statesman, William Ewart Gladstone. Crossing the frontier between France and Belgium, he was interrogated by an officious customs officer: “Have you anything to declare?”
“Only a bunch of grapes,” replied the Englishman.
The officer countered, “You cannot pass with those grapes, sir. They are dutiable.”
“I will pay no duty,” replied Gladstone.
“Then you must leave the grapes behind,” said the customs examiner.
”No, I shall pass, grapes and all,” insisted Gladstone. Whereupon he started slowly eating the grapes until they disappeared. ”Now,” he said with a smile, “I shall pass, grapes and all.”
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A man in Portland, Maine, notified the Bureau of Missing Persons of the absence of his wife. He said she had been missing for fifteen years. The chief was shocked and asked why he had waited so long to report it. “Well,” he said, “I just got kind of lonesome.”
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On Monday night, January 17, 1983, friends of George Burns gathered to celebrate his eighty years in show business. “It’s nice to have an eightieth anniversary,” the eighty-seven-year-old comedian told 200 admirers at a Hollywood restaurant. “It is even nicer to show up for it.”
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A Maine potato farmer and a Texas rancher were engaged in conversation at a political rally. The man from the Lone Star State asked, “How much land do you tend?”
“About a hundred acres.”
“I farm about six thousand myself.”
The man from Maine was not overly impressed, so the Texan continued, “There’s a much bigger ranch down near San Antone. To give you an idea of its size, the owner can start off in the morning in his car, and he ain’t barely crossed his place by noon.”
“I had a car like that myself once,” the man from Maine said.
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Herbert Hoover once said that any President should have the right to shoot at least two people a year without explanation.