Kup's Chicago - Irv Kupcinet [121]
Two longtime girl friends who hadn’t seen each other in ten years met on the street one day. “Gloria,” exclaimed the first, “where have you been all these years?”
“Oh,” replied the other, pointing to the baby carriage she was wheeling, “you know how it is – married and the mother of this eight-year-old boy.”
“He’s eight years old and you’re still wheeling him in a baby carriage?” asked the first.
Whereupon the youngster lifted his head and said:
“Lady, am I bothering you?”
“Bellboy,” said the woman in a Miami Beach Hotel, “can I get change for a dollar?“
”Lady,” said the bellhop, “at this hotel, a dollar is change!”
“I know I’m not as young as I once was,” says Red Skelton. “But I still love to chase girls. Only difference now is that I can’t remember why I’m chasing ‘em!”
Reader Byron Moenter spotted this sign on a firehouse: “You come to our dance – we’ll come to your fire.”
The Randolph Street rover boys tell the story of the bookmaker who died. All his pals of the gambling gentry attended the funeral, listening with respectful solemnity as the minister intoned:
“Our dear friend is not dead, he is only sleeping.”
Whereupon a voice from the rear boomed:
“I’m laying 6 to 5 he’s dead.”
Movieman Frank Freeman tells the story of a youngster who came home from Sunday school and told his father the story of how Moses led the Jews across the Red Sea:
“First, army engineers put up a pontoon bridge. Then Egyptian planes bombed the bridge. But antiaircraft gunners shot down the jets, which enabled Moses to lead the people across the water.”
“Wait a minute,” said the father. “Are you sure that’s the way your Sunday school teacher told it?”
“Not exactly,” said the boy. “But if I told you the way she told it to us, you’d never believe it!”
Points to Ponder
Newsman Clark Mollenhoff’s definition of democracy: Where a person can say what he is thinking without thinking.
Definition of middle age: When your wife tells you to pull in your stomach, and you already have.
Jet planes, according to George Marks, are so fast that he had breakfast in New York, lunch in Los Angeles, and heartburn in Honolulu.
Brotherhood suggestion from Sam Levinson: If you can’t love your enemies, at least be a little nicer to your friends.
People are funny. Tell a man there are eight billion stars in the sky and he believes you. Tell him it’s fresh paint, and he has to stick his finger in it.
Drivers, remember. Gasoline and alcohol don’t mix. Well, actually they do. But the taste is terrible!
A fellow Senator told it to Senator McCarran in an argument over the immigration act that bears McCarran’s name:
“I presume it is your position that this countrv would not be in such a mess today if the Indians had adopted more stringent immigration laws.”
The late New York Mayor Jimmy Walker’s sage observation on racial tolerance:
“To play ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ correctly on the piano, you’ve got to use the black keys as well as the white ones.”
Winston Churchill’s definition of a fanatic: A person who can’t change his mind – and won’t change the subject.
Quote to remember:
“It is a gloomy moment in history. Not for years has there been so much apprehension. Never has the future seemed so incalculable. In France the political cauldron seethes. Russia hangs like a cloud on the horizon. All the resources of the British are sorely tried. Of our own troubles in the United States, no man can see the end.”
The source?
Harper’s Weekly – of October 10, 1857.
Another worth noting:
“Our earth is degenerate in these latter days. Bribery and corruption are common. Children no longer obey their parents. Every man wants to write a book. The end of the world evidently is approaching.”
Source of this one?
Nobody knows. It was carved on a slab of stone in Assyria – in 2800 B.C.!
The late Charles MacArthur liked to sum up his philosophy of life with the words of a condemned man whose hanging he covered as a Chicago reporter. As the man approached the gallows he halted and asked:
“Is this thing safe?”
Let us hope