YES, I AM STILL HERE peeking out my window on Main Street, and recently something got me thinking about a topic I’ve written about several times before: the Burlington Liars Club.
The club was started by — naturally — a couple of newspaper reporters in Burlington, Wisc., who were merely pulling a prank. The actual club was formed a year or so later in 1929. Now people send their entry ‘lies’ from all over the world. Fame spreads.
I’ve had some favorites:
•One guy’s grandson was so smart that at age 2 he could dirty his diaper and convince his mother that someone else did it.
•One year it was so cold in Minnesota that a woman set a teakettle of boiling water outside. She said it froze so fast the ice was still warm.
•There is a bird in Wisconsin whose song is so sweet that diabetics have to wear earmuffs. The bird is called a Saccharine Swallow.
•A woman said that when it comes to math there are three kinds of people: Those that understand math, and those that don’t.
•A man’s grandmother could slice bread so thin that slices only had one side.
•One man said he had some sheep that grazed on grass so rich in minerals that at shearing time he got steel wool.
•My own favorite was about a man whose nephew was so smart he could work the crossword puzzle without reading the clues. Maybe I liked it because I like crossword puzzles.
Not long after the club gained some fame a bar opened in Burlington named the “Liars Club.” It is apparently still open although no one believes the GPS directions to its location.
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NATURALLY the #1 Fair Weather Razorback Football Fan has something to say about the team’s swoon against the Memphis University Tigers.
The team looked so bad that the Fighting Razorback Marching Band has announced that it will not attend this weekend’s game against Notre Dame, but will give up their seats for the overflow crowd which will surely come to see the Hogs upend the Catholics.
Or not.
Truthfully, I have not been able to sit through a Razorback football game in years. I get too nervous waiting for our players to do something stoopid; commit a penalty at the worst possible time; or fumble away a game-saving drive.
But NO. I will not say anything bad about our kids who are trying so hard to earn their NIL salaries. I will not urge them to stop playing like complete imbeciles.
It’s because I am a mature adult.
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ANIMAL CRACKERS. I don’t waddle around my yard much these days, but I did last weekend, and I discovered some kind of deep animal den in the root system of a crepe myrtle tree (bush?). Someone suggested that it might be the digging of Louise Fox, a neighborhood favorite that roams through local yards.
The presence of Louise probably keeps the population of rabbits and squirrels down. I don’t know if foxes dig dens under crepe myrtles. It is thrill to see her, though, especially when she is romping with her kits.
There is a story about how she got her name, but I’ll save that for another day.
But this fox episode reminded me today about the famous Aesop’s fable about a fox.
Aesop may or may not have been a Greek slave in 500 BC who told simple tales with morals.
Some of the better known fables include:
•The boy that cried ‘Wolf!’
•The goose that laid the golden egg.
•The race between the tortoise and the hare.
•The fox and sour grapes.
The sour grapes fable was about a fox that desired some low-hanging grapes. It jumped and jumped but could not snag the grapes. So it said (you have to imagine a fox that can talk) that the grapes were probably sour anyway.
I’ll bet you already knew those morals even if you never heard of Aesop.
I was talking about ‘our’ fox one day with the late Crystal Masey who lived in my neighborhood. I said I doubted that foxes ate grapes.
She corrected me and said they loved grapes. She said often put out grapes at a spot on her acres at Bingen, and sat in her truck to watch fox families come up to eat the grapes.
Real life confirmed Aesop’s fable.
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MORE THINGS I LEARNED from opening an email: “Committee — A body that keeps minutes and wastes hours.”
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WORD GAMES. I love oxymorons: I’m going to the Gulf of Mexico soon. I plan to eat some Jumbo Shrimp.
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HE SAID: “I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security. Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise what is there to defend?” Robert Redford, actor and activist
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SHE SAID: “The really frightening thing about middle age is the knowledge that you’ll grow out of it.” Doris Day, singer and actress
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SWEET DREAMS, Baby
