Category: General Funny

I grew up listening to Jerry Clower. My dad had several 8 track tapes that he would play in his truck when we were going down the road. Clower is a great story teller who can make you laugh without ever being vulgar.

Marcel Ledbetter and The Beer Joint

The Coon Huntin’ Monkey

Words We Dont Need

The Last Piece of Chicken

Fishing With the Game Warden

If I win that danged old power ball I would be more surprised than anyone. I don’t have a snowballs chance to win any of that money. I would like to tell you all that I have never wasted a dime on the lottery. Instead I must admit that I have squandered ten times that amount.

On the first day lottery tickets were sold in Kentucky I bought a $1 ticket. It was a $1 winner! I had won back my dollar bill.

I was excited by all that money and feeling very wealthy with my greenback dollar.

Greed overtook me and I bought another ticket. That last ticket was a loser and so was I.

That losing ticket traumatized me to the point that I have never bought another since. There I was, an innocent young girl, with dreams and plans on what I was going to do with all my winnings. From the second I saw that my ticket was a winner right up to the point I realized the second was a loser I had spent that money in mind. My heart swelled and the world was so bright and happy as I was trying to get myself use to living the rich life.

They had these big old signs what had lots of dollar signs on them and said folks were gonna be winning a lot of money. I think that lottery ticket salesman must a dealt me a ticket from the bottom of the deck to trick me. There I was thinking about all the things I was gonna buy for my mammy and pappy and how I was gonna get some food for the kids. Then my dreams and visions were shattered.

On my way in to the store I was offered a hand full of magic beans for a buck. I told the gentleman I was much too smart a lady for that. When I left the man approached me again with the magic beans. I remember crying and thinking to myself that if I had my greenback dollar my children and my mammy and pappy could have something for supper. Oh well, magic beans causes my pappy to get stinky real fast.

The only thing that gave me the strength to go on and try to live out the reminder of my life was the fact that my Federal Reserve bank note went toward helping youngins to get educated in Kentucky. It was too late for me then. I was broke and without hope. That dollar bill I once had was gone.

I walked on back up the holler and shot a couple possums. When I got home mammy and pappy and the kids were so happy to see the possums they forgot all about the dollar bill.

This story has weighed on my heart and soul all these years and now I can finally come forward and share my heart wrenching story.

Sally Lou Siney

Wayland, Kentucky

Making Money As A Kid Way Back When I Was One Of Them

When I was a kid we were able to earn money in many different ways. We lived out in the “boonies” and couldn’t get a “real” job but we did find ways to get cash if we weren’t too lazy.

Here is what some of my friends and I did to get our spending money.

We all saved pop bottles and copper. Boys would strip copper wires out of any old appliance that was thrown out. There were places and ways to get copper from time to time and we hoarded it like it was gold. A guy’s copper collection could even be used to “trade on”.

The deposit on a 16 ounce returnable glass bottle was ten cents. Folks still tossed them out of car windows and left them laying around. When folks went fishing or camping or something like that they never seemed to want to carry their trash back out with them. That included their returnable pop bottles, just left behind. It didn’t take long to collect up a few dollars worth of pop bottles. There were times when you carried a pop bottle you had found for hours before you finally got home with it. You wouldn’t consider throwing it back down though. In fact you would be glad to feel its weight and think about that big dime added to your pile.

The first I can remember about copper was when it was around 30 cents per pound. It took quite a pile of copper wiring to add up to very much in the way of cash. But it was generally free other than the time we spent working at it. I remember walking alongside the road and finding a heavy gauge copper battery terminal someone had just tossed or lost. To a ten year old boy it was like a piece of treasure. I added it to my pile and spent the money in my imagination over and over.

How long could you save? How long could you wait? That was the game. The longer you waited to cash in your bottles or sell your copper the more money you would get. But the longer you waited the less you could stand the waiting. Somewhere along the line you would always cash in your treasure.

Most of us would need to find someone who would give a kid a ride into town. Several cartons of returnable glass bottles was heavy and difficult to carry on foot. A bucket full of old copper wire was impossible to carry!

The first thing to do now was to get a banana flip and a carton of chocolate milk. Next you would sit down and count the money you have left and start making your plans. So much to buy, but you don’t want to spend it because you don’t want to be broke again. These days it seems that when a kid has money it “burns a hole in their pocket” and they have to spend it as soon as they can. I don’t recall it being that way for us. We were hesitant to spend our money and if we came back from the store and still had money left it was a good thing.

We had peacocks for a few years. I would gather up peacock feathers and take them to school and sell them for 25 cents each. This was in the early 1970s. I also ordered coins and stamps from comic book ads and sold and traded on them at school.

There were others ways that we made money too. When I was 10 years old I was going door to door and asking people if they needed any odd jobs done. I mowed a lot of grass, changed light bulbs, crawled up under houses and a lot more. Most summers I would have a few certain yards promised to me to cut for the season. Every week I would mow the same lawns. So often I would be paid not only with a few dollars but I would also be brought out sandwiches, candy bars and even an ice cold pop!

I once found some Playboy magazines and I pulled out the centerfolds and, you may have guessed it, took them to school and sold them! Yep.

I even had a small stint selling Grit! Yep, rode around on a bicycle tossing papers and knocking on doors trying to get folks to pay up. Grit was just a little newspaper thing back then. It’s a big glossy magazine nowadays.

Mowing lawns and doing odd jobs along with collecting pop bottles and copper and maybe selling a few things here and there kept me up in money to buy BBs, shotgun shells, comic books, and even a 5 cent cigar from time to time.

A fella’ might even be tempted to order from them comic book ads. There were all sorts of amazing and interesting gizmos you could buy right there from the pages of your very own comic book!

I had my eye on those x-ray glasses and that 6 foot submarine for so long, but I just couldn’t part with the money to order them.

Who remembers the Sea Monkeys? Well, when I saw them I just couldn’t live without them! I had to send in my hard earned money for those amazing creatures with ribbons in their hair and smiles on their faces. Why, there was even a promise of potential nudity!

Well, if those X ray specs were anything like those sea monkeys then more likely than not I just never would be able to see through that ladies skirt anyway. Might be better that I saved my money and bought instead things like 5 cent cigars, BBs and shotgun shells. I imagine I would have just gotten into too much trouble if the X ray Specs did work so it was probably just a no win deal. I tell ya what though.

Lately I have been thinking about going down and getting one of those new comic books and checking to see what amazing devices can be ordered now. Perhaps I can read her mind while I am looking through her skirt?!

There’s gotta be a song in there somewhere and if you can find you can have it for a dollar.

Written by a dern fooll

At our place we had animals, and having animals meant work. Seems to me that animals were always needing something. My dad would send me to feed and water. There was always a fence that needed repairing or some thing or other.

I had to go to the barn and climb up into the loft and wrestle down a bit of the hay separating the bats and tossing them down so that the horses and cows could get to it. When I did this I just naturally tended to be very careful because of a bad experience I had already had not too long before. You see just below where I had to cross some beams without flooring, in order to drop the hay down in the right spot, there was the big brown mushy swamp of cow pies. I slipped out of the loft while trying to tote too much hay one time. I reckon a person falls faster than hay because I wound up buried up in wet cow patties and sprinkled with hay. I’m sure that dad wasn’t happy about all that hay getting muddy. Luckily he was too busy laughing at the kid covered in cow pies to get mad about the hay.

After the hay was put down it was off to the well to draw up water. The well was just up the path a ways and still in the pasture. There was a long narrow cylindrical bucket on a chain and a simple, uncovered well about 8 inches or so in diameter. Man, that chain got cold in the winter! Next to the well there was an old claw foot bathtub. I dumped bucket after bucket of water in that tub for the horses, ponies and cows – as well as raccoons, opossums and others I am sure.

There was a few times when I had to go do the hay and water before going to school. I would be way up there on the hillside pasture drawing that water bucket and it would still be dark out! It was a really spooky place to be at that time of the morning and I often saw, or at least heard, terrible creatures hanging out just inside the tree line.

When I was done with the water and was walking back toward the house I could sometimes feel those creatures breathing on my neck. I picked up the pace as I went along, knowing that I would be lucky if I barely made it back down to where the lights and people were. Many was the time that I would arrive out of breath and feeling like my hair was standing on end. I had heard the stories. There were strange things in those hills. I was sure of it.

We had chickens, geese, ducks, guineas, pigeons and even a pair of peacocks. You are talking about a lot of feed there! We had a few pigs too. I would scoop out four big scoops of the pig feed, which looked like pellets, into a 5 gallon bucket. Then I would fill the measuring jug up twice with water and pour that onto the feed. You stir that up real good and by the time you carry it up the hill to the pig lot your arm is about to fall off and the slop is nice and mushy. Those pigs also loved corn and I toted many a bucket filled with corn up that hill too. I once saw a hog eating on a chunk of coal. The thing acted like it was good!

Speakin’ of hogs, I remember when I killed my first one. I was about 12 I reckon. My dad handed me the .22 rifle and told me it was my turn. At the time I felt so proud and like one of the men. I shot the hog between the eyes from about 6 inches away. I was looking right at his eyes when I done it and after the bang it was looking right into mine. It was dead. Its head smashed in the slop bucket and its eyes were open and looking right at me. I felt so sorry for that pig. When mom brought up the fried cracklin’s I was thankful for that hog. Not much better than fresh fried pork skins… and fried in lard to boot!

After all of that was done it was time to head out to meet the school bus. It was a bit of a walk down to the wooden bridge at the mouth of the hollow (“holler”) but at least it was mostly down hill.

Guest writer Lloyd B.

This piece could have been titled Interview With A Hillbilly

I was led back down a long hall way that separated the storage side of the barns from the rest. The last doorway on the left. A shadow in the shape of a man. The room is dark. He begins to speak, his voice garbled and disguised electronically.

My guide is explaining about the interview process but the mysterious figure is already talking. “Shh! Listen!”

The guide says, “Ha ha he talks funny,” and then continues to ramble about the coffee down at the cafe.

I heard the mysterious figure expounding upon the deepest secrets and mysteries of the universe but I forgot to write any of it down because my guide was talking too much. “Shut up and Listen! I want to write down what he says!”

And here, friends and neighbors, is what that crazy hillbilly said:

When I was just a baby I used to cry every day because I wasn’t a hillbilly. Why did mom and dad have to go to the wrong side of the river just before I was born? How could I ever go through life as a buckeye? I felt hopeless and doomed from the start. (As you can very well imagine, I’m sure!)

One day my mother told me the truth. She said that after they had closed the doors at that hospital she was beaned back to Kentucky with special secret alien technology. I was born right there in the state of Kentucky and then instantaneously transported back to the Ohio hospital delivery room.

Naturally, I didn’t believe a word of that crap so I asked where her and dad were 9 months before I was born when the ‘thing’ happened. “Kentucky.” Yee ha! I’m a hillbilly!

It’s the old story. A bunch of hillbillies head north looking for factory jobs…

You first heard about it in Clarence Kelley’s song, South of Cincinnati. Just like the guy in that song nearly everyone in my entire family moved up north back in the 1960s. My little part of the family moved back and forth and so I would be in the city for awhile and then in the country.

Whenever I was down in Kentucky they would say “you talk like a fancy northerner!” or “Ya gyall durned buckeye!” but when I was up north I was called a hillbilly or a hick.

I never once felt sorry or embarrassed about it either. Of course just the natural fact that I was always traveling back and forth led to me developing my own hybrid crazy accent.

When someone would call me hillbilly or make fun of how I pronounced a word I didn’t get embarrassed; If anything I might get mad. I didn’t try to change the way I spoke to suit them.

I was taking a music course and at the first session the instructor tried to correct my pronunciation. I said, “Buddy I am here to learn more about the guitar. It’s not your job to teach me how to talk.” I wasn’t rude or upset at all, just blunt. From then on he never mentioned a word about the way I pronounced my words.

I Reckon People Talk Funny All Over The Place

Lets face it though, people who talk with a significantly different “accent” are hilarious. That’s true for pretty much anyone. Don’t you want to laugh when you hear a strong British accent or perhaps someone from Alabama or Kentucky? Personally when I hear one of those guys out on Staten Island goin’ at it it cracks me up.

I know someone who lives in Ohio who is convinced that she and her ‘neighbors’ speak exact and proper English and everyone else is wrong. She seems to have no idea how she would be viewed if she were up in Brooklyn talking to some folks in a street side cafe. Or even in Portland; nearly everywhere but her Ohio she would be seen as having an accent or “talkin’ funny”.

That is exactly why all of this is so funny! There is no such thing as the so-called proper pronunciation! It’s a myth!

The worlds highest educated and traveled scholars will not all have the same accent or pronunciation.

So what makes you think you are better than anyone else just because of the way you pronounce your verbiage?

The truth is folks that we all “tawk funny” every last one of us.

If you don’t believe that you talk funny go out and jump in a car, a bus, a jet or a train and go 500 miles in any direction.

Find the nearest tavern or “spot” and go in there and start talking to people.

Guess what?

You tawk funny!

~~~~~~~~~

There you have it folks.

The Buckabilly who thinks he’s a Hillbilly says y’all talk funny!

Aint you good and mad?

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I am a moderator on an active website and I see comments similar to “I don’t believe you because you didn’t use correct grammar…” or “Your statement is a lie because you can’t spell…” Comments like that tend to be deleted and so do not see the ‘light of day’ but many folks comment that way nonetheless. I suppose if a writer used perfect grammar these people would believe them regardless of the truth? The inability to write perfectly is equal to the inability to tell the truth? Why man! There silly crap to laugh at every which way you turn!

Copyright 2011 HillBillyCrackpot.com

When I was a kid growing up in Kentucky we all thought that hillbillies came from Georgia and Tennessee. We had no idea that we were hillbillies ourselves. Heck, we were just regular, ordinary people, well educated on the ways of the world and just as sophisticated as anyone else in the hollow.

I remember us sitting around watching the Beverly Hillbillies on TV. That was the first time I had ever seen these funny people. I asked my mother, “Are hillbillies really like that?” She told me they sure were and that she had actually talked to one of them when she went down to Lake Norris in Tennessee about 20 years ago. He talked real funny and she could barely understand what he was saying. “Is that where they live?” I asked her. That was how I found out that hillbillies were real people and they lived in Tennessee and Georgia mostly.