Saturday, November 11, 2006

1936 Humor

That person in my house has a book titled "World's Best Jokes" dated 1936 edited by Lewis Copeland.

A bunch of the jokes are racially (and otherwise) offensive by today's standards. The book breaks down it's jokes into these categories: American, Yankee, Rube, Negro, Irish, Scotch, Jewish, Hobo, Drunk, Preacher, Lawyer, Doctors, etc.


Also, there's a lot of jokes that don't even make much sense to me as a 2006 dog:

"Papa, why is it that dentists call their offices dental parlors?"

"Because they are drawing-rooms, my son."



The jokes that are about a person's race or heritage are written in a vernacular that I don't have the patience to work my way through:

"I canna get ower it," a Scotch farmer remarked to his wife. "I put a twa shillin' piece in the plate at the kirk the mornin' instead o' ma usual penny."

The beadle had noticed the mistake, and in silence he allowed the farmer to miss the plate for twenty-three consecutive Sundays.

On the twenty-fourth Sunday the farmer again ignored the place, but the old beadle stretched the ladle in front of him and, in a loud, tragic whisper hoarsely said:

"Your time's up noo, Sandy."

2 comments:

Khady Lynn said...

Ok, those jokes are A) not funny, and B) don't make any sense. Apparently they had a totally different sense of humor back then than they do now. Those humans are pretty hard to understand now, I can't imagine living back then and trying to figure them out!!

Holly

Fargo said...

Yeah. The book is really weird! It's hard for me to find a husky worthy gem in it...and there are 1000's of jokes!