Hounds
He was a general practitioner in a small town in Iowa.
He liked being a doctor, but he liked coon hunting even more.
He liked coon hunting so much that he had 40 coonhounds.
That many dogs took a lot of food.
The doctor found a way to keep his dog food bill down by scrounging food from the local school.
There was a great deal of the school's hot lunch program that went uneaten right into a garbage can.
The dogs loved the stuff.
The dogs loved the recycled hot lunch program food so much that when summer vacation arrived, the hounds would stage a bit of a hunger strike before they'd eat the summer replacement fare.

RUMINATIONS
I think my neighbor is going through some sort of a mid-life crisis. He bought himself one of those snazzy, expensive sports cars, but he can’t remember where he parked it.

The Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles responded to complaints about long waits by removing the clocks from its facilities.

When we seek to find the best in others, we bring out the best in ourselves.

The common wristwatch could be going the way of vinyl LPs and public pay phones. I see fewer and fewer wearers of wristwatches as cell phones become the timekeepers of choice.

A secret to lessening your chances of getting door dings in parking lots is to always park next to cars nicer than yours.

In day’s past, a man’s word was his bond. Now we have glue.

The road to success is marked with many tempting parking spaces.

It’s interesting that the same people who laugh at pro wrestling believe weather forecasts and economists.

Why is it that at class reunions you feel younger than everyone else looks?

We either make ourselves happy or we make ourselves miserable. The amount of effort required is the same.

Anyone who still enjoys the smell of newly mown grass in August either didn't cut it or needs some serious counseling.

THE ENTREPENEUR
When I was but a mere lad, I found the jawbone of a cow. I cleaned it up and put it in under the pillow on my bed.
I didn’t get a dime for all of those teeth.
You can’t fool the Tooth Fairy.

DOUBLE-DIPPING
My neighbor tells everyone that he lives just past the dip in the road.
For years, I’ve tried to figure out where that dip was.
Then it dawned on me.
I'm the dip.

ALWAYS AVAILABLE FOR COMMENT
My father and I watched a mime go through his routine.
I asked Dad what he thought of the act.
His reply was, “That’s the nearest thing to nothing that I’ve ever seen.”

MEIER’S LAKE
I stopped at a place called Meier’s Lake Roadhouse in Alaska.
It’s not much of a place. I’m not sure that it even has a population.
I grabbed the menu and saw that the price of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich was $67.50.
None of the prices of the other menu items seemed out of the ordinary.
I asked the man behind the counter why the price of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich was so high.
He replied, “I just don’t like making them.”

KINDERGARTEN CHRONICLES
A friend from Arkansas and I were recalling our memories of kindergarten.
I related my experiences of naptime in Minnesota. This involved sleeping on a rug I'd brought to school. I usually rolled around on the rug naplessly before falling asleep right before my teacher would wake me up. I would awake with rug marks on my face and a bit of drool on the rug.
The Arkansan told me that his family was too poor to own any rugs.
He said that at naptime, his teacher would hang him on a nail by the back of his bib overalls.

THE RECIPE
My mother told me that she hadn’t been married long when my father expressed a hankering for a certain dish that his mother made.
My mother, wanting to show her new husband that she was a good wife and a good cook, asked her mother-in-law for the recipe for the particular dish.
My grandmother told her that she had no recipe, but would gladly share the method she used in preparing the food.
She directed my mother to use a pinch of this and a smidgen of that and a skoosh of something else.
My mother told me that she never could prepare the dish the way her mother-in-law could.
Mom said she thought the problem was that she kept getting her pinches, smidgens and skooshes mixed up.

SEPTEMBER
As September, so the coming March.

If there is a thunderstorm before noon in September, there will be much snow in the winter.

If there is light rain on September 29, expect a mild winter. If the wind blows from the north or the east on September 29, we will have a cold winter.

If September brings many acorns, Christmas will cover the fields with snow.

Fair the first of September, fair the entire month.

Thunder in September brings plenty of snow in February.

—©Al Batt 2005