THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 21, 1996 TAG: 9604180457
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: George Tucker
LENGTH: Medium: 83 lines
I can't let National Humor Month pass without sharing a few of the hundreds of amusing Virginia anecdotes that I have collected over the years.
To get things rolling, take this bit of poetical fluff by an anonymous Norfolk bard dating from the early years of the present century when dog days sufferers regularly boarded trolleys to Ocean View to take advantage of the cooling Chesapeake Bay breezes.
Two pickpockets met on an Ocean View car, each picking the other's pocket.
The woman crook get his pocketbook, and the man got her diamond locket.
Admiring each other, they fell in love, they married, but what was worse,
The wished for a child who cold snag a bag, or pilfer a Scotsman's purse.
Their wish came true, and a boy was born, a slick-looking, sly-faced mite,
But alas, alack, with a crippled hand - the fingers were closed up tight.
The heartbroken parents hurried the child to a famous specialist,
And offered him watches and precious gems, if he could unclench the fist.
First thing he did was to tie a string to a wristwatch with jeweled band,
And wave it steadily, back and forth, just over the crippled hand.
As the fingers opened, the mother and dad began to dance and sing,
For there in the palm of the baby's hand was the midwife's diamond ring!
Turning back the clock to the 18th century, here is a whimsical rhymed advertisement that appeared in the Winchester Mercury in 1788.
I am an old man, my case is quite common,
I want me a wife, a likely young women.
I late had an old one, but three months ago,
She sicken'd and died, and left me in woe;
I whin'd, had a sermon preach'd when she was buried.
Wore my old wig a fortnight, then long'd to be married.
If any one knows where a wife's to be had,
Such as seventy wishes when reason is dead;
A girl that will warm up my old bones in the winter,
Let them leave the intelligence with Mr. Printer.
Switching to prose, there is this tale of an English admirer of the late Confederacy who was urged by a Virginian temporarily residing in New York to visit the sites around Richmond connected with the Late Unpleasantness. After having enjoyed the hospitality of the Holy City for a couple of weeks, the Brit communicated his enthusiasm by letter to his reluctantly exiled friend.
``I say, old bean, you never told me that Virginia was anything like I have found it, or was different from the North,'' he wrote, adding, ``Why, man, this is God's country.''
In reply, the Virginian commented dryly, ``You don't suppose that God Almighty was a damned Yankee, did you?''
Then there was an occasion during the Prohibition era when a witty Virginia clergyman was solemnizing a marriage in a Norfolk area church. At some point during the hitching process a groomsman slipped out into the vestibule to take a swig of bootleg whiskey from a bottle he had secreted in his overcoat pocket. Unfortunately, he was well on his way to a severe case of delirium tremens, and lost his grip, resulting in the bottle crashing on the entry's titled floor.
In no time the rank stench of corn liquor not only permeated the church, it reached the nostrils of the officiating clergyman. Pausing for a second, he lifted his eyes heavenward and commented, ``Lord have mercy!'' I have often heard of the odor of sanctity, but this is the first time I've ever smelled it!''
To end on a high note, on another occasion a mixup on the front page of a Garden Week supplement in a Virginia newspaper turned out to be the equivalent of trying to pass off stinkweed for sweet peas. The page was illustrated with two six-column photographs. One depicted a grim bevy of flower-hatted, besashed and bemedaled sisters of the spade who had recently been honored by a prestigious national horticultural society. The other showed the ivy-covered ruins of a pre-Revolutionary church.
Somehow, the pictures got transposed, and when interested members of the public got around to reading the cutlines under the depiction of the lady gardeners, they were jolted by the following: ``These venerable Virginia ruins will be thrown open to the public for the first time this year during Historic Garden Week.'' by CNB