As I get older and reflect back on my time on this earth, it is humorous in some respect that I seem to remember the good times. Moreover, in my case I tend to remember the funny things of even a bad situation. It's like your subconscious blocks out the bad things only letting you remember the pleasant circumstances of even an awful situation. Whatever makes this occurrence happen, in my case I think it is good in that it has provided me with a library of hilarious stories. A good story is like a fine bottle of wine and the key is the aging process. In the case of a story the more aging time the more embellished, embroidered, and simply blown way out of proportion the story becomes, and in my opinion, that is what makes a funny story a hilarious one. Therefore, I have propagated this theory throughout this book . . With all this in mind, I have tried to offer in the following stories the right amount of embellishment that will provide the reader with just enough body to paint the picture, but not too much to bog down the reader to boredom. Now I understand that what is humorous to one person may not be the same to another, but it is obvious to me that just the normal day-to-day events can sometimes be the funniest, and if the person can relate to these events within their own experience then in turn they are really laughing at themselves through someone else's eyes. Therefore, with that idea in mind, I am only asking that you sit back, relax, and enjoy the stories, with one different twist, and that is to laugh at me.
50 Years of Humor: or Just Plain Reality
A Mississippi Boys Outlook on LifeBy JAMES H. HENDERSONAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2009 LTC JAMES H. HENDERSON, "COTTON", USA (Ret.)
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4490-0998-4Contents
Preface.......................................................vDisclaimer....................................................ixCollegian Days................................................11. Family and Football.......................................72. The Breakfast Meal........................................103. Chicken Dinner............................................134. The Hangover..............................................155. Turn Out the Lights, the Party's Over.....................196. New Orleans...............................................25Law Enforcement Days..........................................297. Parking Meter Caper.......................................318. Highway 49................................................419. The Ticket................................................4510. Nightclub Raid............................................4711. Clip-On Tie...............................................5112. The Nightstick............................................5513. Alleyway..................................................5714. The Tattoo................................................60Military Service Days.........................................6115. Hundred Mile An-Hour Tape.................................6316. Reforger..................................................7017. Bikini....................................................7318. Awards Day................................................7519. The Line..................................................7920. The Presidential Visit....................................8321. Grand Canyon and the Move.................................8622. The Boy Scout Trip........................................8923. The Deer..................................................9024. The Door Man..............................................9325. Car Buying................................................9526. Coffee Shop...............................................9727. The Plane.................................................10028. The Snake.................................................102A thought to leave you with;..................................104About The Author..............................................107
Chapter One
Family and Football
We have all heard the old sayings that allude to the concept of family ties. You know the ones that go like this: "Family Ties are Strong," "Family bonds cannot be broken," "It's a Family Affair," "Family Business," or the one that I really like, "Blood is thicker than Water." The following story takes the saying, "Blood is thicker than Water," and adds a different twist to the meaning, and the story goes like this:
My sophomore year of football had me on the varsity team, which meant that I was eligible to travel and dress out for home and away games. However, there were some other benefits to making the varsity team and dressing out for all the games. The best one I know of is the four free tickets. Tickets were provided to every player, for all the games home or away, to be given to family and friends to offer an incentive for them to come watch the game and their favorite player. The real question was, were the family members and friends coming to watch the player or just coming to watch the game? I guess we will never know, but after seeing the players, family members, and friends after the game, it would sure make you wonder, present company not excluded.
Nevertheless, the logic being if the tickets are free, then there is a better chance that family and friends will come and watch the game. This will solve two issues for the coaching staff: it helps fill up the stadium, and second, it will boost the morale of the players. You see that once the season starts, there is no going home to visit family and friends; you are there until the season is complete. Some players' families and friends live too far away, and travel and lodging would be a large enough expense. But to add tickets on top of the other two expenditures, could be a bridge too far. Just think of the cost of living today, and in the last twenty-five years ticket prices have almost tripled, making it no small matter to offer free tickets then, as well as now.
Well enough of the build-up. Let us get back to the story. It was a Tuesday before the big game on Saturday, and we were playing the University of Alabama, in Birmingham, so I called my parents to see if they wanted to use my free tickets to come and watch the game. To let you in on a little secret, both my parents were graduates of the University of Alabama, so I knew they would like to see the game and seeing me would be an added bonus. Or so I thought. My dad answered the phone. Now he was a rather large man with a very formal and rough disposition, and if you did not know better, you would think he was fixing to kill you any second. But most of the time, it was just his demeanor. Or at least you hoped it was.
As I stated before, he answered the phone we said our greetings, how are things there, you know the basic niceties. And then I proceeded to get to the reason for the call. I told my dad about the four free tickets that were given to me for family and friends, and that I had just got mine for the game this Saturday. I told him whom we were playing, and asked if he and Mom wanted to come and watch the game. There was a short pause and then my father spoke in his regular deep voice, "Son, you're Mother and I are going to the game. Remember we have season tickets, and we will be riding on the Alumni Bus to the game, and sitting on the Alabama side of the stadium." Well to get to the jest of things, for the four years we played Alabama, my parents went to every game, but sat on the Alabama side and cheered them to victory. We never beat them in the four years I played, got close a couple of times but no cigar, and after every game my parents would always be waiting outside the locker room door for me to come out, and my dad would always say, "Alabama really looked good today, didn't they, Son?" It never failed. Bottom line this is how I know that the old saying, "Blood is thicker than Water," should have really been, "College is thicker than Blood."
Chapter Two
The Breakfast Meal
I guess all of us sometime or another have experienced the differences between the North and South cultures, and the different way that people in these regions think and look at things around them. Some of the obvious are accent, name associations, and some of us might even go as far as to say we are separated by a common language. I have been told repeatedly during my military service that I need to escort certain individuals to Southern states for them to conduct coordination. When I asked why me, I was told, "Because you speak the language." I always assumed the language they were referring to was "Southernese", and the technique was the way I slur my "S'sss" and roll my "R'sss."
But with all that said and done, it has been apparent to me that there are definite cultural differences. However, I do not want to discuss all of them, but only point out one cultural difference that stands-out ahead of all the others, and that concerns breakfast meals, and the story goes like this:
As stated previously, I attended a fine university in south Mississippi, on a football scholarship in the early to mid seventies. In those days, the athletes lived in their own dormitory that included a cafeteria for their use. Once a week we were permitted to have guests to dine, which mainly consisted of family and friends, but most important girl friends. The facility consisted of a dining room with round tables that would seat four persons at one table, but the room could seat over one-hundred individuals. It is designed in a cafeteria layout consisting of a serving line were individuals move down the line and choose their particular food items.
One morning, three of my friends and I were dining together. One of my friends had invited his new girlfriend, who was not originally from the South, but whose family lived above the Mason Dixie Line in one of those popular Northern states. We said our greetings and began to move down the serving line pointing at certain food items and telling the workers behind the serving line exactly what we would like to eat. As we moved down the serving line, we proceeded to grab additional food items as we came to them, but if we missed something, it was not a problem for we could always come back for seconds if there was enough, and they always cooked more than enough.
Once we all had been served, we picked a table to sit at and began to eat. However, all of a sudden my three friends and I stopped what we were doing to notice what the girlfriend was about to do. We were all dumb founded; we could not believe what we were seeing. She had a bowl in front of her where she began to pour milk in the bowl, and then was about to sprinkle sugar over the contents in the bowl. This was about all my friend could stand and asked her what she was doing. She replied very perky, "I like milk and sugar over my Cream of Wheat." My friend said very calmly, "That's not Cream of Wheat, it's grits!" Well as any good Southerner would know, you put butter, salt, and pepper on grits.
Needless to say, the two broke up within the next couple of weeks. I felt obligated to inquire why they broke up and he stated, "Because it was a mixed marriage." I am not a real smart man, so I had to ask him to clarify himself. He explained. "You know, she is from the North and I am from the South. She was Catholic and I am Baptist. Bottom line, it's a mixed marriage, and anyway my Momma would never understand if I brought her home." I do not know if this concept has any merit, but I do understand bringing her home to meet Momma. Well, that is another story.
Chapter Three
Chicken Dinner
While we are on the topic of the dining facility, there is one other story that comes to mind and this pertains to the chicken. You can refer to chicken in many different ways like poultry or yard bird, and it can be served in just as many diversified ways. Having provided that brief introduction, the story goes like this:
One evening a friend and I were in line at the dining facility. His position in football was a lineman, he was a rather big person, and he had told me that he had come from a large family. If you do not know what I am leading to I can explain, but dining in a large family means second helpings are far and few between. I remember in my own family if there were only vegetables and no meat for dinner it was probably the end of the month and my dad's paycheck was late. But even knowing that I would always ask the stupid question, "Where is the Meat?" leaving myself wide open for my parents to chastises me about how I don't need meat every meal, I need to eat more vegetables, and ultimately how I am an ungrateful slug. After thinking back on the majority of my family meals, it is obvious to me that at any given meal there is never enough meat.
With all that said, I was waiting for my turn to say what I would like to eat to the worker behind the serving line. I was rather excited, because they were serving barbecue chicken and that is one of my favorite meals. My friend told the worker he would like barbecue chicken and she proceed to place a huge piece of meat on his plate. As he took the plate from the server, he looked down at the piece of meat and back up at the server a couple times, and finally said to the worker, "What is that?" She looked at him like he was crazy and said to him, "It is a half of chicken." He looked a bit bewildered and gazed back at his plate and then to the worker and said, "I did not know it came in two halves, I thought it came in eight pieces, you know two legs, two thighs, two wings, and two breasts."
Well as you guessed, my friend had never seen chicken cut that way, and he was rather taken back with the way it was prepared. But over the next four years he got used to the large portions provided every meal. You know I cannot help but laugh every time I think of him, and I bet he got a rude awakening when college was over and had to go home each summer.
Chapter Four
The Hangover
My folks use to say, "If you drink heavy the night before, you will pay the next morning." This reminds me of a friend of mine that validated this idea in more ways, than one, and the story goes like this:
A fraternity bother of mine was in the city of Memphis, Tennessee to attend a college football game. He lived in Kentucky and was supposed to travel home after the game. On completion of the football game, my friend decides that it was still early and he would partake in the city's nightlife for a couple of hours before he left for home. Well you know how it is. A couple of hours leads to four, and before he realizes it, it was after midnight. Realizing he had drunk way too much to drive back to Kentucky, he decided to get a hotel room for the remainder of the night, or should I say, early morning.
The attendees from the football game must have had the same idea because the first three hotels he stopped at had no vacancies. By this point, the alcohol was getting to him and my friend was hoping for some luck. The fourth hotel was his lucky day, and the hotel manager advised him that the hotel was under construction, but he did have one room on the backside of the hotel. He also stressed to be sure to park his car not in the first parking lot, but in the second parking lot adjacent to the backside of the hotel where his room was located. Well, my friend was drunk and exhausted, and as soon as he got in the room and lie on the bed, he was out like a light.
The next morning of course, he over slept, so when he woke up, he began to hurry and get dressed. He noticed that on the thick shag carpet was some sort of gray powdery residue that lead from the door to the bed. As he began to put his shoes on, he noticed that the substance was on his shoes, too. Not having time to put much thought to the matter, as well as his head hurt too bad to do much in-depth thinking, he grabbed his things and left the room for his car. He looked in the parking lot in front of his room and there was no car. He reached in his pocket to check for his keys and was relieved to find they were there. Not to panic, he circled around to the other side of the hotel and there in the other parking lot was his car. Happy to find his car he unlocked the door, climbed in, and began to start the car.
The car started like a high performance racecar at the Indy 500, and he placed the car in reverse and proceeded to apply the gas to the engine for the car to move and back out of the parking place. However, there was a problem. The engine revved speeding up the RPMs of the motor, but the car did not move. He placed the transmission stick shift to "Park" and then back into "Reverse," and pressed down on the gas pedal again, but the vehicle remained stationary. At this point, he was completely baffled, placed the car back in "Park," turned the vehicle off, and got out of the car to survey the situation.
As he got out of the vehicle, he moved to the front driver's side and began to crouch down on his hands and knees to look to see if he had driven onto something that was keeping the car from moving. He looked at the under carriage of the vehicle front and back, but he had not driven on anything. As he crawled out from under the car, he was still on his hands and knees right in front of the driver's side tire. At first glance, something looked strange with the tire, but initially, it did not register.
At this point, he stopped to take a closer look, and to his amazement, the tire had sunk into the pavement, and the concrete had covered the bottom half of the tire to the wheel well. He jumped up in shock and ran around the front of the vehicle to the passenger side to look at that tire. Yes, it also sunken into the pavement. This is impossible, he thought, and by now, my friend was in total shock as he looked at the remaining back tires just to find them in the same predicament as the front ones. And all he could think about was how could this be?
To his disbelief, all four tires of his vehicle were submerged into the parking lot cement with the concrete dried solid around the bottom half of the four tires. He also noticed behind his vehicle at the entrance to the parking lot was a caution tape strung the length of the parking spaces with a sign attached that read, "Caution Do not Enter Wet Cement." Well, to make a long story short, it cost my friend $4,500 to get his car removed from the concrete and to repair the damaged cement.
Well, as you can see my friend not only paid with a bad headache, but also paid with his wallet. He would probably recommend two other ideas to go with my folk's proverb, and that being a designated driver and drinking responsibly. The only problem with that is if he had done all the above, then I would not have had this funny story to tell.
Chapter Five
Turn Out the Lights, the Party's Over
I was a member of a fraternity where I had some great times and made some lasting friendships. We still get together each year for homecoming events, the football games, of course, and most of all to visit and tell lies were it seems I acquire new and funny stories each year. During my tenure at the university, it seems that our fraternity was on probation all the time, and I always have to wonder if the folks that created that movie (you know the one I'm talking about) had seen or heard about our fraternity house for it sure has some of the same familiarities.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from 50 Years of Humor: or Just Plain Realityby JAMES H. HENDERSON Copyright © 2009 by LTC JAMES H. HENDERSON, "COTTON", USA (Ret.). Excerpted by permission.
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