The Hancock-Henderson Quill, Inc.



"The Wisdom Of Barnyard Bruke: Retarded Grandparents, Slow Food, and Old'n Day Advice"

Greetings to ever one in western Illinois and all readers of The Quill. I'm a hope'n your week is a go'n well and you are thankful fer the many blessings we has here in western Illinois.

Retarded Grandparents

Jasper Jenx shared with us boys some enterest'n information he received about a third grader who wrote on what his parents do. After Christmas, a teacher asked her young pupils how they spent their holiday away from school. This one child write the follow'n:

We always used to spend the holidays with Grandma and Grandpa. They used to live in a big brick house, but Grandpa got retarded and they moved to Florida.

Now they live in a tin box that has wheels, but its strapped to the ground. They ride around on their bicycles, and wear name tags, because they don't know who they are anymore. They go to a building called a wreck center, but they must have got it fixed because it is all okay now, they do exercises there, but they don't do them very well.

There is a swimming pool too, but they all just jump up and down in it with hats on. At their gate, there is a doll house with a little old man sitting in it. He watches all day so nobody can escape.

Sometimes they sneak out, and go cruising in their golf carts. Nobody there cooks, they just eat out. And, they eat the same thing every night - early birds. Some of the people can't get out past the man in the doll house. The ones who do get out, bring food back to the wrecked center for potluck.

My Grandma says that Grandpa worked all his life to earn his retardment and, says I should work hard so I can be retarded someday too. When I earn my retardment, I want to be the man in the doll house. Then I will let people out, so they can visit their grandchildren.

Well, me will be jiggered! The perspective of this young person is shorely priceless.

As long as we is dwell'n on older folk I reckon it might be well to share with youn's some information Elmer Fudpucker shared with us a while back. I'm not shore if'n his information makes us nostalgic or just OLD! It goes as follows:

Slow Food

A young feller asked the other day, "What was your favorite fast food when ya was growing up?"

"We didn't have fast food when I was growing up," I informed him.

"All the food was slow."

"C'mon, seriously, Where did you eat?"

"It was a place called â"at home", I explained! Mom cooked every day and when dad got home from work, we sat down together at the dining room table, and if I didn't like what she put on my plate I was allowed to sit there until I did like it."

By this time, the kid was laughing so hard I was afraid he was going to suffer serious internal damage, so I didn't tell him the part about how I had to have permission to leave the table.

But here are some other things I would have told him about my childhood if I figured his system could have handled it.

Old'n Day Advice

Some parents NEVER owned their own house, never wore Levi's, never set foot on a golf course, never traveled out of the country or had a credit card.

In their later years they had something called a revolving charge card. The card was good only at Sears Roebuck. Or maybe it was Sears & Roebuck. Either way, there is no Roebuck anymore. Maybe he died.

My parents never drove me to soccer practice. This was mostly because we never had heard of soccer.

I had a bicycle that weighed probably 50 pounds, and only had one speed, (slow). We didn't have a television in our house until I was 19. It was, of course, black and white, and the station went off the air at midnight, after playing the national anthem and a poem about God; it came back on the air about 6 a.m. and there was usually a locally produced news and farm show on, featuring local people.

I was 21 before I tasted my first pizza, it was called "pizza pie." When I bit into it, I burned the roof of my mouth and the cheese slid off, swung down, plastered itself against my chin and burned that, too. It's still the best pizza I ever had.

I never had a telephone in my room. The only phone in the house was in the living room and it was on a party line. Before you could dial, you had to listen and make sure some people you didn’t know weren't already using the line.

Pizzas were not delivered to our home but milk was.

All newspapers were delivered by boys and all boys delivered newspapers---my brother delivered a newspaper, six days a week...It cost 7 cents a paper, of which he got to keep 2 cents. He had to get up at 6 a.m. every morning.

On Saturday, he had to collect the 42 cents from his customers. His favorite customers were the ones who gave him 50 cents and told him to keep the change. His least favorite customers were the ones who seemed to never be home on collection day.

Movie stars kissed with their mouths shut. At least, they did in the movies. There were no movie ratings because all movies were responsibly produced for everyone to enjoy viewing, without profanity or violence or most anything offensive.

If ya wants to and ya grew up in a generation before there was fast food, ya might want to share some of these memories with your children or grandchildren. But don't hold me accountable if'n they bust a gut laugh'n.

Ya know, grow'n up ain't what it used to be. Recently whilst rummage'n thru the attic an old Royal Crown Cola bottle was found.

In the bottle top was a stopper with a bunch of holes in it. I knew immediately what it was, but my daughter had no idea. She thought they had tried to make it a salt shaker or something. I knew it as the bottle that sat on the end of the ironing board to "sprinkle" clothes with because we didn't have steam irons. Talk about OLD!!

Just fer conversation, how many of you's remember the follow'n:

Hope'n to see you's in church this weekend. Remember, we are called to be witnesses, not lawyers or judges.

Wherever ya is, what ever ya be a do'n, BE A GOOD ONE!

Keep on Smile'n

Catch ya later

BARNYARD BRUKE