The Hancock-Henderson Quill, Inc.


The Wisdom Of Barnyard Bruke "I DON'T MAKE JOKES; I JUST WATCH GOVERNMENT AND REPORT THE FACTS"

-Will Rogers

Greetings to everyone in western Illinois. Well, we missed the 60 mph winds predicted for last Friday, thank goodness.

It goes to show-worrying about tomorrow can be wasted energy. I'm a think'in somebody made that wind story up just to get our minds off the rain, mud, and high moisture corn.

Some folk think the government has an answer for everything. Cornelius is fond of telling the following story to prove his point of the ineptness of government to solve all problems.

It seems a livestock farmer named Henry, was checking his herd, in his pasture, in a remote region of Hancock County. Suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced toward him out of a cloud of dust.

Henry observed the driver to be a classy young man dressed in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and a KSL tie.

"He shore was all gussied up". The young feller stepped out of his vehicle and asked Henry, "If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me one of those calves?"

Henry gazes down at the man, obviously a yuppie with a sticker on his bumper declaring change for a better world, then glances at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, "If'n you mean a calf from this pasture-Sure, why not?"

After parking his car the yuppie whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location. He then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo.

The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany.

Within seconds, he receives an e-mail on his palm pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored.

He then accesses an MS-SOL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with an e-mail on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response.

Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150 page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP Laster Jet printer, turns to Henry and proclaims confidently, "You have exactly 150 cows and calves in this pasture." "That number is correct, sez Henry. Well, Henry states, I guess you can take any of the calves out there.

He watches as the young man selects one of the smaller animals, which seems, overly friendly and easy to catch, captures it, and with amusement observes the young man stuff it into the trunk."

Henry then asks the young man, "If'n I can tell you exactly what your line of work is, will you give me back my animal in your trunk?"

The young feller thinks about it for a spell and then says, "Okay, why not give it a try."

You are a newly elected Democrat Congressman for the U.S. Government" sez Henry.

"Wow and golly gee! That's correct and right on the money", sez the yuppie, "But how in the world did you ever guess that?"

"No guessing required," answered Henry.

"You showed up here in my pasture grinnin like a wave on a slop bucket even though nobody called you, with your nose stuck up so high in th' air, you'd drown if'n it came a hard rain; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked."

"You used millions of dollars worth of equipment trying to show me I'm dumber than a box of rocks and how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing about how us working folk make a live'n and are as useless puttin' a milk bucket under a bull. You know nothing about cows, for that matter."

My pasture contains only a flock of sheep.

Now give back to me, out of the trunk of your car, my dog.

Now Cornelius, I sez, is that story true about Henry. Well, sez Cornelius, to that I'll quote Will Rogers who stated: "I don't make jokes; I just watch the government and report the facts".

Or, sez Cornelius, how about Ronald Reagan, he is quoted as having said, "Government is like a baby-an alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other."

But, I sez, you seem rather hard on the liberals at times. Well, sez Cornelius, Harold MacMillan said it best: "As usual the liberals offer a mixture of sound and original ideas. Unfortunately, none of the sound ideas is orignal and none of the original ideas is sound."

Well, sez I, I'm gonna dwell on them thoughts a spell. In the meantime-come help me try to get my combine unstuck from the mud hole in the back 40.

Keep on Smile'n

Catch ya later

Barnyard Bruke