Overall Wit & Wisdom

Bill Chitwood for Progressive Dairyman

I’ve done so much after-dinner speaking in the last few months all I have to do is see a slice of roast beef and I start looking for my notes. Recently, just before I was to be introduced at a banquet in Winnipeg, Canada, I heard a fellow at the head table say to his next-plate neighbor, “I’d rather hear Bill talk than eat.”

His neighbor said “Me too, I’ve heard him eat.”

Then, in Lynden, Washington, an old boy said that my speech was like the horns on a steer, a point here, and a point there, and a lot of bull in between.

Last winter the woman’s club in our area asked me to speak to their membership on “The Art of Kissing.”

I accepted the job, but on the way home I got to thinking that my wife might not like that. So when I got home I told her that I was going to speak to the woman’s club on the subject “Boats and Sailing.”

I delivered my speech on the scheduled day on “The Art of Kissing,” and it was a smashing success. The following day the president of the woman’s club saw my wife in the supermarket and said, “We all enjoyed your husband’s speech, and he certainly knew his subject well.”

My wife said, “Well, it’s a wonder cause he’s only done it twice. The first time his hat blew off and the second time he got sick to his stomach.”

It’s May, and in spring, a young man’s fancy turns to what the girls have been thinking about all winter. I have a cousin that just can’t seem to land a husband. I call her an old maid, but her parents don’t like that. They call her an unclaimed blessing.

I think that one of her problems is the fact that she is so shy. She turns her dresser around to the wall so its drawers won’t show. And in school she wouldn’t even do improper fractions. I won’t say how old she is but she knew the Big Dipper when it was just a drinking cup.

I said, “You’d better hurry up if you’re going to get married.” She said, “Don’t be silly, the best ten years of a woman’s life are between her 39th and 40th birthday.” She’ll never see 40 again, even on a clear day.

She’s a bread folder and a gravy sopper. She has everything a man could want, muscles and a mustache too. Her parents say she’s one of the upper 400. They’re going to find out that she’s more like one of the Heinz 57 varieties. But some dark night some man will ask for her hand in marriage. You know most men choose a wife in light; they’d never think of buying a suit in the dark.

Talk about marriage, my wife and I will celebrate our 53rd wedding anniversary this month. When you have been married as long as we have you have to be careful or your relationship will kind of wane.

Like take a week ago last Saturday night, for example. We were sitting on the settee. I was sitting on one end and she was sitting on the other. We were watching television. We were watching Lawrence Welk and every once in a while we would click over and see how wrestling was coming along on another channel. My mother was the one who got me hooked on wrestling. She was the only person I ever knew that thought the moon landing was a fake and wrestling was real.

While we were watching TV my wife said, “Bill you know when we first got married you did not sit down on the other end of the settee. You sat right down here next to me ” She went on to say, “I sure did like that.”

I scooted down there next to her. Then she said, “You remember when you were sitting down here next to me you would put your arm around me and then you would reach over and nibble on my ear. It just sent cold chills up and down my spine. I sure did like that.”

I got up and headed for the bathroom, and she said, “Where are you going?”

I said, “I am going to get my teeth.”

Keep smiling and laughing to lighten up your life. PD