Roger Allen, publisher. “Rockford is the Humor Capital of the World”
This week: Serious Topics only
The first is Communication.
Smart phones are extremely popular. All that email and texting is handy, but the result has been big income losses for the Post Office. It’s on the verge of insolvency.
About 200 years ago Benjamin Franklin launched the U.S. Postal Service, a huge project in a vast
new country.
All our lives a mail carrier has come to our door six days a week. What an incredible effort to deliver mail to every house in the country, in every little town from Maine to California! It’s part of the fabric that holds America together.
Today, Apple Computer and Microsoft are rich corporations and the Post Office is broke.
This qualifies as a Serious Topic.
Education
The other day I happened upon some pictures of American children from about the turn of the twentieth century. This was in the days of child labor, a practice widely accepted and highly profitable for business owners. So these weren’t school photos I was looking at; many of them were taken in front of the factories that employed the kids.
So now we come to a joke I also came across the
other day:
A young boy went into an office to be interviewed for a job. The man in charge asked his full name.
“Francesco Czuchna McGillicuddy,” he replied.
“How do you write that?” asked the manager.
“Well, sir,” said the boy, “can’t you just put it down without spelling it?”
Religion
A young pastor was sitting in a restaurant eating lunch. He opened a letter he’d received from his mother that morning and a twenty-dollar bill fell out.
The young pastor thought to himself, Thanks, Mom, I sure needed that right now.
As he finished his meal, he noticed a beggar outside on the sidewalk leaning against the light post. Thinking the poor man could probably use the twenty dollars more than he, the pastor scribbled out the names on the envelope and wrote in big letters across the top: PERSEVERE!
So as not to make a scene, he put the envelope under his arm and dropped it as he walked past the beggar. The man picked it up, read the message,
and smiled.
The next day as the pastor was eating his lunch in the restaurant, the same man tapped him on the shoulder and dropped a big wad of bills on the table.
“What on earth,” asked the pastor, “is this?”
“That’s your half of the winnings. Persevere came in first in the fourth race at the track yesterday and paid thirty to one.”
Health
A woman comes out of the gym, spots a friend in the parking lot, and says, “I just lost 10 pounds!”
Her friend says, “Uh… turn around. I think I might have found them.”
She wasn’t selected for the jury.
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