Humble is bone ugly an unlucky

Bill Mardis, Editor Emeritus
Commonwealth Journal

March 02, 2009 10:02 am

— Friends, if’n your humble reporter din’t have bad luck I wudn’t have no luck a’tall.
I wuz born’d without a jib ’uv clothes on. One ’uv my y’ears looks lack hit wuz stepped on by a mule. My r’at eye looks one way an’ my left eye looks the t’other. My belly is so fat I ain’t seed my brogans fur years. To make a long story short, your humble reporter is bone ugly, an’ thar ain’t no cure fur ugly.
I done missed by snow predickshion sumethang awful. I predickted 13 rabbit trackers this winter, based on the number ’uv foggy mornin’s in August. Rabbit Tracker No. 13 fell the thurd day ’uv February and the snows keep’sa comin’. The last count I had wuz 16 rabbit trackers an’ more is predickted this weekend. I ’bout as em’barrassed as I wuz the time my galluses broke at skol an’ my britches fell down ’round my nees r’at in front ’uv the teecher.
You’ins kan’t depend on the critters no more to predick the weather. No doubt thar’s so much po’lution that hit’s got the weather predicktin’ critters konfused.
’Nother thang, them air U.S. Givermint rocket scientests is shooting holes in the sky with ’em daggummed rockets. That’s done let all the warm air out an’ we’ins is gittin’ more snows than we’ins is ’sposed to.
Them astronaughties claim they put a man on the moon but thar’s been a man on the moon ever since I wuz knee-high to a grasshopper. You’ins kin see him on a klar night when the moon is full.
The moon ain’t that fur away nohow. Y’all ’member that nurserry rime ’bout the ol’ cow jumpin’ over the moon. When I wuz jest a little shaver over in Taylor County, our nebber’s cow tore her sack up on a barbed-wire fence an’ he always claimed Bossy done hit tryin’ to jump over the moon.
I never did bulieve they shot no fellers to the moon. If’n y’all ’member, we found that moon rover out c’here atop Holtzclaw Knob. Them astronaugh-ties wuz city slickers an’ they jest thot they wuz on the moon.
That ain’t all, neither. Me an’ a buncha ol’ timers when out c’here at Punkin Holler an’ found a big moon rock rolled up in a fencerow. That’s the truth if’n I ever told hit, friends.
These givermint fellers spent a fortune bringin’ back moon rock samples when we had all they wanted r’at c’here in good ol’ Pulaski County. An’ they din’t cost nothin’ neither.