Chapter 11
Brother George is another year older this week. I can’t help but wonder how HE’D react if he was quite suddenly brought back to life for a day or two. Bet his pretty white curls would straighten out in a Yankee hurry!!
Those curls used to give me fits when I was a child. We always had to COLOR a picture of the portly old gentleman on his birthday. Besides, when I was young, NO boy wore his hair in long curls, so it seemed a waste of MY time to be coloring them.
I suppose the children today don’t have THAT problem, since Sally Jane’s big brother has hair longer than even ole’ George’s was. And Martha Sue’s Daddy can even put him to shame on the CURLS!! Ah, but times do change!
I bet one thing hasn’t chang ed though. Our children, the same as our grandparents did and as our grandchildren will, probably hear all about the cherry tree and how little Georgie could NOT tell his poppa a lie. So, you see even politicians were HONEST in the old days.
Which reminds me of a story: There was this mother and father who got themselves a bad case of impatience.
They decided that they couldn’t mold and make their son into what he was destined to be if they didn’t know what the little feller had done been cut out to be.
So, the poppa, knowing his son a good deal better’n he figured his wife did, thought about the issue for a spell.
One day while he was plowin’ the north forty the solution to the problem came to him like a bolt of lightnin’. He threw down the reins, left the mules standing right in the middle of the corn field, and raced home.
He pulled the bottle of whiskey out from behind Grandma’s picture and poured a shot into a water glass. He placed it on the table, then took the Bible down off the shelf and laid it beside the whiskey. Last he took a dollar bill from his pocket and put it on the table beside the Bible.
The trap was set! He found Ma in the hen house gatherin’ eggs and made her come to the house where he proudly presented his layout!
“Now,” he says, “When Junior comes home, me and you will hide and see which one he picks up. If he drinks the whiskey, he’s bound to be a drunk. If he takes the dollar, he’ll be a thief. And if he chooses the Bible, we’ll know he’s bound to be a preacher man.”
So, they hid and by and by Junior came home. He stopped in front of the table, and he shifted his eyes this way and that way. Then he picked up the whiskey, gulped it down, shoved the dollar bill in his pocket and tucked the Bible under his arm, all in a split second.
“Oh, Pa,” the mother cried, “we done got ourselves a politician!!!
I wonder if the boy had long curls!!