Road Apples by Tim Sanders
Oct. 11, 2010

Mannerly men and sports


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As you may have noticed, there’s been a lot of excitement at the Gaylesville campus of the Mannerly Man Institute this fall. Our Free Range, Open Rules Croquet team managed to schedule a game with the scrappy Mallet Queens from Miss Edith’s Finishing School for Girls, from Beaufort County, South Carolina. With home field advantage, and of course our powerful defense, we won our first and only game of the season by a score of 17 to 15. (Nine of the Mallet Queens’ points were scored while our goalie, freshman Osgood “Ozzie” Bunspackler, was remanded to the penalty box for rushing across the field and high sticking the other team’s right winger, Tiffany Obermeyer. The referee chose to ignore the fact that she’d just scored a goal by tossing a Little Debbie Chocolate Chip Snack Cake a few yards from our goalie’s wicket. But a win is still a win, regardless of sloppy officiating.) After the game, our entire student body, all twelve of them, rolled the stop sign in front of the Gaylesville Fire Department.

But our business here is answering your questions, not boasting about victories on the croquet field. Here are a few, some of which actually involve manners:


Q: Yesterday I went to a restaurant for a job application. They gave it to me and told me to go home and fill it out. One of the questions asked how I would dress a chicken. I hadn’t never thought of dressing no chicken before. What would you advise?

A: That is a trick question, just to see if you’re paying attention. Simply state that you cannot answer it without more information. For example, is your chicken a rooster or a hen? Are you taking your chicken to a formal affair, or on a more casual outing? Little chicken sneakers and caps would certainly be appropriate for a picnic in the park, but a night at the opera would require either a bow tie or an evening gown.


Q: Monday my wife Vicky she come into the living room with a pen and paper and told me she had some questions for me. “Tell me what these things mean,” she said.
So I said okay, and she said “Something to build on.”

I didn’t know what she was getting at, and I told her so. She said I should just say whatever popped into my head, so I said “Something to build on would be a vacant lot.”

“Vacant lot, that’s good,” she said, and scribbled it down.

“How about execution?” she said.

I was beginning to get the idea. It was like Family Feud. I told her “Electric chair” and she wrote that down.

“Big cushion?” she said.

I told her “couch,” and she wrote that down, too.

“Pocket?” she said.

I told her “Pants.” That seemed to satisfy her.

“Flushed out?”

“Toilet.”

“How about this then?” she said; “He’s overdue to break a big one.”

I had to think about that for a while, and then told her: “Larry, after that huge plate of pinto beans he ate at the church covered dish dinner.”

She give me a funny look, and then scribbled it down. There was lots of other words she asked me, but I don’t remember them now. When I asked her what it was all about, she said she was watching a football game last Saturday, and couldn’t make heads or tails out of what the sportscasters was saying, so she wrote some things down. She said she didn’t remember which teams was playing, except one of them had a duck or a goose as a mascot. She said aside from the mascots they was all pretty much the same, anyway.

A: And your question is?


Q: Is there any medicine I could give her?

A: None that would help.


Q: Then how about Duress? She said one of the quarterbacks threw a ball under Duress. She wanted to know if Duress was a first name or a last name.

A: I’d say first name. I believe Oregon has a wide receiver named Duress Armstrong.


Q: Last Saturday we had a Bledsoe family reunion at the church fellowship hall. Now cousin Donnie who comes from Georgia is a big Bulldog fan, and Junior, who lives in Huntsville, is all Crimson Tide. So when they get together there’s usually trouble. This time, since Georgia ain’t got no team to speak of, and Alabama is Number 1, Donnie he decided he would steer clear of football.

“I hear you got some more of your politicians arrested this week,” he sniffed, all high and mighty like.

Well, this got Junior’s back up. “And I suppose Georgia ain’t got its share,” he said. “Our Alabama politicians is just as honest as anybody else’s, and way better than that bunch of weasels in Atlanta. Besides which, there’s something awful suspicious about the timing of them arrests. In case you ain’t noticed, every politician that ever gets arrested in Alabama gets arrested either before, during, or after an election. Happens over and over again. Don’t tell me that’s just coincidence!”

So Donnie he snorted and asked Junior just how many Presidents we’d growed in Alabama, and Junior he said maybe Big Jim Folsom never made President, but at least he would of knowed how to handle a rabbit attack, unlike certain peanut farmers, and one thing led to another and pretty soon they was both under the table, kicking and gouging and slinging potato salad around like children. So Pastor Milton, who is also a third cousin on Momma’s side, finally pulled them apart and said: “Brethren, this is a fellowship hall, which should be full of Christian love and good will. If you want to discuss politics, TAKE IT NEXT DOOR TO THE GYMNASIUM. DAMMIT!”

There wasn’t no serious injuries, but what do we do about next year’s reunion?

A: You might just want to accidentally forget to invite Donnie and Junior. Or you could take a cue from Cousin/Pastor Milton and hold it in the gymnasium.