Uncle Ned’s Corner
UNCLE NED ON SEN. MCCONNELL
(From the Liars’ bench) I ain’t never voted fer or agin that Mitch McConnell feller from across the river. That’s cuz he ain’t my senator. I seen the reports of him freezing up on camera, twice in fact, lately. The doctors may say it ain’t from mini-strokes or what some call “TI.” It don’t hafta be that or Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s or some such thing. When I was a youngster what McConnell has now was just called senility or senile dementia in some cases. The only big name that don’t know that is Joe Biden. He don’t wanna talk about senility. Instead, he calls it recovery from that concussion that Mitch got when he fell, just like the ol’ man that he is.
Senility don’t have a cure. A remedy of sorts is retirement. Most folks would say Mitch has earned a retirement. Retirin’ now would make it easier for other Republicans to criticize Biden over his age and his slowin’ down. Mitch, its time to retire. Y’all got better things to do. Yer a Kentucky thoroughbred ready for pasture.
‘Til then you’d best keep away from that combination of cameras and reporters askin’ questions. There’s still time for you, to show some authority by slappin’ down Coach Tuberville, who claims to support the military while he’s blockin’ hundreds of military promotions. He’s a one-termer anyways.
UNCLE NED ON TIME TRAVEL
(As overheard recently at the Liars’ Bench)
Jed: I been thinkin’ and wonderin’, Ned, if there’s ever gonna be time travel.
Ned: You know very well that we travel through time, minute by minute, day by day.
Jed: I ain’t talking about goin’ forward in time at sixty seconds a minute. Can we leap ahead into the future or back into the past?
Ned: Pretty sure we can’t do that now. I kinda doubt that we’ll ever be able to leap back into the past.
Jed: How so, Ned?
Ned: Cuz they’d have come already.
Jed: Couldn’t they come back in time and just blend in while they’re here?
Ned: That would run against human nature. Keepin’ secrets is a rare gift. Besides, the “while they’re here” could be a long time. What I mean is that a machine for movin’ back in time ain’t necessarily a machine for leaping back to the future where you started from.
Jed: Ya think they’d travel back in time and risk changing the future?
Ned: Depends on what kinda future they’re havin’.
Jed: What if they went back in time to a year or a century earlier than what we call the present?
Ned: Then I would have to ask how much of our history ain’t yet been writ cuz it ain’t happened yet.
Jed: Think I need to lie down.
UNCLE NED AND INTELLIGENT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE
(As overheard recently at the Liars’ Bench)
Jed: I been thinkin’ and wonderin’, Ned, if we’re alone in the universe.
Ned: And I’m wonderin’ if you’ve gone off yer meds agin.
Jed: D’ya think there’s intelligent life out there?
Ned: It’s simple as most other things, Jed. You can count the possibilities on the fingers of one hand. One is that we had neighbors once but not now. Two is that we ain’t never had neighbors but we will some day. Three is that we don’t have neighbors now, never did, and never will. Four is that we have neighbors that may or may not be comin’ t’ visit. How’s that for four fingers simple?
Jed: My cousin Clovis sez he saw a little grey feller out on the river bank a couple of summers back.
Ned: What’s true for Clovis ain’t always true fer the rest of us, Jed.
Jed: Of the four ways it could be, what would be best?
Ned: Let’s look at three and four. We got neighbors or we don’t. Both ways is a comfort and a fright. Neighbors can be a comfort but neighbors from some other world might get to likin’ us too much.
Jed: How would that be a bad thing?
Ned: What I meant was likin’ us too much same as we like hogs ‘n cattle ‘n chicken.
Jed: Are we better off bein’ alone?
Ned: Ain’t it a wonder if the Almighty made the whole universe for us?
Jed: But what’s the fright ’n that, Ned?
Ned: Say we’re the only life that is, ever was, or ever will be and we got the whole universe to ourselves. How we doin’ so far?
Uncle Ned Sets the Nation “Straight” on Public Restroom Gender Confusion
(As overheard recently at the Liars’ Bench)
Ned: I keep readin’ and hearin’ ’bout this new law down Carolina way what sez a person hasta use the public restroom that matches the sex on his birth certificate.
Jed: Sounds like a good idea to me.
Ned: I thought so too, ’til I thought it through. Say yer usin’ the gents’ room doin’ yer bizness and then walks in Bruce Jenner?
Jed: Who’s this Mr. Jenner, Ned?
Ned: Cain’t call ’m Mister no more nor Bruce neither. Jenner’s that Wheaties box guy what had a lot of work done. Got to call ’m Caitlyn these days.
Jed: I see it now clear as day. Those Carolina fellas want Caitlyn in their restroom. That won’t pass for smart in these parts, but I always wundered ’bout Carolina.
Ned: Time was when thar was a lot less confusion ’bout which restroom a body should use.
Jed: Why do ya s’pose things got so complicated?
Ned: That one’s easy. The root of the problem is indoor plummin’. Jes tear out that public restroom with its fancy lights an’ mirrors and runnin’ water and set up a one-hole outhouse.
Jed: How ‘bout a nice one-holer with a sturdy inside latch?
Introduction by Aunt Hattie
Hello. I’m Hattie Mae, Ned’s wife for more years than I care to say. I’m writin’ all this ‘cause I promised and not ‘cause I want to. ‘Round the house here all my Ned ever says is “Yes, Ma,” or “That’s right, Ma,” or “I’ll see to it dreckly, Ma.” An’ he don’t mean none of those things. But when he slips into town without me, they say his tongue looses up considerable. Though it’s mostly nonsense to me, here’s the tellin’ ‘bout my Ned.
If you ride into town and take Main Street past the State road, past the five & dime, past the tracks and Treadway’s Market, right there on the left you’ll see the Johnson’s Hardware and a bench situated on the sidewalk next the store. Now that’s the bench where old men in hats and in work boots that never met work sit wastin’ time chawin’ and jawin’ ‘bout how they won the war or some such thing. There’s a coffee can at each end of the bench to catch their spit or most if it. That’s where most of their stories belong, too. There may be a bottle gettin’ passed ‘round. Ned had best never come home smellin’ of that. An’ he best never be seen with a grandchild of mine near that bench. In my house there’s no drinkin’ an’ no chawin’ allowed. Today I’m the same God fearin’ woman Ned married, an’ I remind him of that ‘most every day. Ned needs that remindin’.
It’s got to where Ned won’t visit town without he’s wearin’ a clean shirt, but no good ever come of that. I call that bench the Liars’ bench ‘cause that’s what it is. So here’s the part I promised to tell. Seems that some of the men folk can’t help but brag on my Ned for what he says on that infernal bench. Some of what Ned says even gets wrote down, an’ that’s what you’ll be readin’ here. Parts of it might be true. God Bless…Aunt Hattie
The Wit, Wisdom, and Hoosier Philosophy of Uncle Ned
Uncle Ned explains that you can take the judges out of politics but you can’t take…
The other day I sat a spell at the Legion Post when a man come in sayin’ he was runnin’ for office as a reformer an’ how he had this plan for to take the judges out of politics. He sounded peculiar to me but I kept smilin’, noddin’ my head, and listenin’ to this man go on and on ‘bout his plan to take the judges out of politics. When every glass on the bar was empty or near empty and that man’s hand kept far from his wallet, I shut him up an’ sent him on his way just by askin’ how he proposed to take the politics out of judges. Politics in a judge is like a wood tick in a hound’s ear. No amount of talkin’ can make it leave. That tick has to be plucked, an’ the hound cain’t do the pluckin’ hisself.
Dave’s note: Uncle Ned asked me cite Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000) wherein 8 of 9 SCOTUS Justices sided with the party of their nominating president. Justice David Souter (now retired) was the only Justice of the Supreme Court to break political ranks when he dissented from the 5/4 decision favoring George W. Bush.
Uncle Ned Recalls a WPA Joke
Listen up boys. Now the only outfit I ever heard tell of that took more time to do less work than the CCC was the WPA. One hot summer day there was a WPA crew s’posed to be clearin’ some roadside ditch. One of those gents was a leanin’ on his shovel (a shovel oughta be good for somethin’) when this lonesome ol’ hound walked up, sniffed the blade of that shovel, and relieved hisself on it while the gent kept on leanin’. After a little while the gent with the shovel turned and said “Why you mangy ol’ cur…I’d surely bash your brains in, if’n I had another shovel.”
Dave’s Note: Uncle Ned asked me to explain that the CCC and WPA did much good work, some of which still stands. Apart from a relatively strong work ethic the workers in those Depression era programs kept a sense of humor that accommodated Ned’s joke and others.
Leave a Reply