Join The Marines For Fun and Games

Dear Mama and Daddy:

I am well. Hope you are too. Tell Walter Allen and Elmer Ray the Marine Corps beats working for old man Minch by a mile. Tell them they need to join up quick before all of the soft spots are filled. I admit I was restless at first because you have to stay in bed till nearly 6 a.m., but now I am getting so I like to sleep late.

Tell Walt and Elmer all you do before breakfast is smooth your cot and shine some things. The Marines don't have any hogs to slop, feed to pitch, mash to mix, wood to split, fire to lay. Practically nothing. The men do have to shave but it is not so bad, the warm water is downright hot and it seems to last forever.

Breakfast has some deluxe trimmings like fruit juice, cereal, eggs, bacon, and stuff, but they don't serve enough chops, potatoes, ham, steak, fried eggplant, pie and other regular food. But just sit by two city boys that live on coffee. Their food plus mine holds me till noon, when we get fed again. It's no wonder these city boys can't walk much.

We go on "route" marches, which the Platoon Sergeant says are long walks to harden us. A "route march" is about as far as to our mailbox at home. Then the city guys get sore feet and we all ride back in trucks. The country is nice here, but you don't even have to get down on your hands and knees to go uphill.

The Sergeant is just like Mr. Mac, the schoolteacher. He nags some. The Captain is like the school board; he deals with the mamas and the papas concerned about their kids. I've only seen a few Majors and Colonels. All they do is just ride around and frown. They don't bother you none.

The Marine Core keeps giving me medals for shooting. There's nothing hard about it. The bulls-eye is near as big as a chipmunk head and it never twitches. Ain't nobody shooting at you while you try to take aim either. All you got to do is lie there all comfortable and pull the trigger. You don't even have to reload your own cartridges. These bullets are BRAND NEW and they come in little metal boxes so they don't get wet.

Then we have what they call hand-to-hand combat training. That's right, I GET PAID to wrestle with them city boys and they don't get to jump me when I'm shoveling out the hog wallow neither. I do have to be real careful though because they break easy. I guess that's the reason the Marines pay me so good; it ain't near as much fun as throwing the ole bull around at home before church on Sunday morning.

Be sure to tell Walt and Elmer to join the Marines before our cousins find out about this setup and come stampeding in. If you top off their quart jars afore they leave home they shouldn't be be getting homesick like I did the first month.

Your loving daughter,
Sarah Jane Lyons

*****

The Park Service advises you to look for snakes before you step.  My advice is to make a racket as you go because it's the stalking hunter that gets bit, not the elephant's son.

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When you average it all out you may be going downhill from here to there, but you still have some mountains to climb before you get there.

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Of course I need a job.  Everyone needs a job.  Everyone needs something to gripe about!

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We have a very stable marriage. 
I give her everything I have
and she lets me alone.

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I keep a big bottle of ginger ale in the fridge.  I don't hate the stuff enough to go buy something else, and I don't like it enough that I'll guzzle it down either.

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Watch out for that truck ahead of us, Honey.  He's slowing down to the speed limit.

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God has put me into the furnace so hot to bring me swiftly forth with a brighter gleam. But Lord, I'd rather lay here dull with the glory I lack and simply rise slowly to the top like cream.

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I've taken 40 years to learn how to write humor, but it only took two for me to appreciate it.  The introduction of good clean humor will bring your family together and leave loving memories behind.   May I suggest that you begin immediately, if not sooner, to incorporate REGULAR READING of humorous material in your family.  Set every Monday night aside for an hour of fun and games, with liberal doses of humor contributed by one and all.  Visit your favorite dentist's office and borrow some old Reader's Digest magazines to scrounge through with jokes that are too old to remember, but too good to forget.  When you run out of Digests -- and it can be done -- you can get THOUSANDS more humorous books from your local library.

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We have the cats pretty well trained here.
Now they only come inside the house
when we open the door.

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If basketball players had to spit as much as baseball players do 
they would slide all the way back to home plate every time they took a shot.

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The little boy burst into tears on his first day of school
"Teacher, my pencil ran out of ink."

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Only knowing one way to spell a word is the sign of a feeble mind.  Andrew Jackson.

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Note attached to a bulk email:  "Each year in the U.S. alone, the "postal" bulk mail industry consumes over 450 million trees just to make the paper used in sending their advertisements and promotions. Using email instead can significantly reduce this consumption, while at the same time decreasing the billions of tons of paper waste filling our landfills.  Save the trees, save the planet, read MY email!"

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Joe shook his head sadly and told his boss.  "I should have known before I volunteered for this job that you really were stupid enough to go through with it."

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Saddam ended his hunger strike after missing just one meal.  That makes me wonder just how long he would have lasted under the Hussein regime.

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Every time I start to do something around the house Alice exclaims, "I was going to do that."  Maybe so.  But the dishes never get done, the floor never gets swept, the beds never get made, and the bills never get paid.  When she stops me from doing those things I think she is trying to make me feel guilty too.

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Get Rich QUICK --

If all you have is one dollar and all I have is one dollar, both of us are just plain broke. But if you buy my Plan To Get Rich for a dollar, and I buy your Get Rich Idea for a dollar, then at least we can blame someone else for us for the hole we're in.

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Pack a pound less
and hike a mile farther.

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