“The car won’t start,” said the wife to her husband. “I think there is water in the carburetor.”
“How do you know?” said the husband scornfully. “You don’t even know what a carburetor is?”
“I am telling you,” repeated the wife, “I’m sure there is water in the carburetor.”
“We’ll see,” mocked the husband. “Let me check it out. Where’s the car?”
“In the swimming pool.”
A man from Minnesota was walking down the street, carrying a brown paper bag. He met a friend who
asked him what he had in the bag.
“Fish,” he replied.
“Well,” said the friend, “I’ll make a bet with you. If I can guess how many fish you’ve got in
your bag, you have to let me have one.”
“I’ll tell you what. If you can tell me how many fish I have in this bag, I’ll give you both of them.”
A tomcat and a petite feline beauty were courting in the back garden one night. The tom looked at her
wistfully and purred, “I’d die for you.”
She gazed back into his eyes and asked, “How many times?”
A young schizophrenic named Struther,
When told of the death of his mother,
Said, “Yes, it’s too bad,
But I can’t feel too sad.
After all, I still have each other.”
There was a young lady named Perkins
Who just simply doted on gherkins,
In spite of advice,
She ate so much spice
That she pickled her internal workin’s.
There was a young lady from Gloucester
Whose husband once thought that he’d lost loucester.
But he found her that night
In the icebox, locked tight.
We all had to help him defroucester.
There once was a man named Finnigin
Who broke out of jail just to sinnigin;
He broke laws by the dozen,
Even stole from his cousin
Now the jail he broke out of, he’s innigin.
What is a quark? It is the noise that a well-bred duck makes.
A woman had twin boys but was forced to give them up for adoption. One went to a family in Egypt who
named him Amahl. The other went to a family in Spain and was named Juan.
Many years later, Juan sent a photo of himself to his birth mother. She was delighted to receive the photo
but told her husband that she wished that she also had a picture of Amahl.
Her husband said, “But they’re identical twins. If you’ve seen Juan, you’ve seen Amahl.”
A shy boy met a girl at a nightclub and wanted to invite her back to his house. He asked her whether
she would like to see his collection of stamps.
“Huh!”, she responded. “Philately will get you nowhere.”
Two men were passing a field when they saw an altar with a large zero in the middle and a huge
banner proclaiming “NIL”. Furthermore, there were worshippers kneeling before the altar to The Great
Nullity and The Blessed Emptiness.
One man turned to the other and asked, “Is nothing sacred?”
Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.
POSH: British gentry often traveled to and from India during the hey-days of the empire. The most comfortable accommodations on board ship were always on the side away from the hot tropical sun.
Therefore Port Out Starboard Home often became abbreviated to POSH. [The earliest printed use of the nautical acronym was in a 1952 issue of the New Yorker magazine.]
By Hannah Campbell
Six years after George Avery Bunting became a school principal, he turned his back on the education field and enrolled in the University of Maryland’s pharmacy school, from which he graduated in 1899. A few years later he opened a modest little drug store in Baltimore and was soon happily engaged in developing a skin cream formula he had formulated.
Older residents of Baltimore joke today [1964] about the poor store service they received because Dr. Bunting spent most of his time in the back room working on his beloved formula. But his customers liked the genial druggist and their impatience soon turned to interest. They actually began to enjoy watching him as he mixed, heated and poured the skin cream into little blue jars from a huge coffeepot. More and more of them bought the cream, which was called simply Dr. Bunting’s Sunburn Remedy, and soon other druggists were ordering it for their customers.
He compounded and discarded hundreds of names in the search for the one with the necessary force and appeal. Finally, when even the optimistic Dr. Bunting was about to give up, inspiration came from a customer who walked into the store and casually observed, “Doc, you know your sunburn cream sure knocked out my eczema.”
From this chance remark, Dr. Bunting’s Sunburn Remedy ceased to exist and Noxzema Skin Cream was born…. Doc Bunting’s sunburn remedy that “knocks eczema” is a multi-million dollar business.
The millions of Sanka fans owe their decaffeinated coffee beverage to Dr. Ludwig Roselius – and luck.
Dr. Roselius, head of a large coffee business, had for years searched for a way to remove caffein [caffeine] from coffee without harming the coffee’s flavor and aroma. Then, in 1903, a shipload of coffee consigned to him was deluged with sea water during a storm in passage. Since the cargo was unfit for commercial sale, Dr. Roselius turned it over to his researchers for experimental purposes.
One important discovery emerged – sea-washed coffee beans reacted differently from the normal coffee beans previously tested. This suggested a new approach to the problem of taking caffein out of coffee, and a new series of experiments began, from which emerged the forerunner of the process in use today which removes 97% of the caffein without injuring the delicate coffee flavor. Dr. Roselius named the new product Sanka – a contraction of the French phrase sans caffeine.
Q. How did the pound cake get its name?
A. From the one-pound quantities of the key ingredients (sugar, butter, eggs and flour) in the original recipe.
Q. John Tyler had more children than any other American president. How many did he have?
A. Fifteen. Married twice, he had a total of eight sons and seven daughters.
Q. What is the only fifteen-letter word in the English language that can be written without repeating a letter?
A. Uncopyrightable.
Q. With what sport did the word “stymie” originate?
A. Golf. To be stymied meant to find an opponent’s ball between your ball and the hole on the green. Until 1952, when the rules of golf were changed, the ball had to remain where it was, blocking yours, so that you had to loft your ball to reach the hole.
Q. How many of the ships involved in Columbus’s historic 1492 expedition made return voyages to the New World?
A. Only one – the Nina. The Santa Maria, Columbus’s flag ship, ran aground off Hispaniola [the island of Haiti and the Dominican Republic] and was abandoned after the first expedition; the Pinta sailed home from the New World and disappeared from history.
Q. What is the origin of the once popular dog’s name “Fido”?
A. It’s from the Latin “fidus”, meaning “faithful”.
Q. When Charles Lindbergh soloed across the Atlantic in 1927, what did he take along to keep him company?
A. The “Lone Eagle” took Feliz the Cat doll on his thirty-three-and-a-half hour trip.
Q. What special training was required of the first airline stewardesses, hired by United Airlines in 1930?
A. They were registered nurses. This requirement was dropped 12 years later.
Q. What is the literal meaning of the word “Eskimo”?
A. “Eaters of raw flesh.” It’s an Algonquin word, one the Eskimos themselves don’t use. They call themselves Inuit, which means “The People”.
Q. What department-store chain marketed its own car in 1952 and 1953?
A. Sear, Roebuck & Company. The car, the Allstate, was built by the Kaiser- Frazer Corporation.
By R. Linquist
An interesting story about Lawrence Saint has to do with the death of his son. We find this note in Lawrence Saint’s obituary in a local newspaper, “One of his sons, Nathaniel, was among five American missionaries massacred by the Auca Indians in Ecuador in 1956.” Lawrence Saint recalled in “The Romance of Stained Glass” that he had received a telephone call informing him that his son was missing in Ecuador. “Then I learned that my little dream-boy of long ago, with his deep blue eyes and golden curls, was now in Heaven with his risen Lord Whose presence in Emmaus I had just tried to make real in my painting, ‘Abide with Us’.”
Lawrence Saint and his family were very religious. Minard Smith told me that Mr. Saint’s sons would often walk through Huntingdon Valley and Bryn Athyn, quoting the Scripture to anyone who would listen.
It is not surprising that the only daughter in the family, Rachel, continued to do missionary work in Ecuador. Her efforts have not been forgotten. For about seven years ago, I was watching the 700 Club program on television and heard Rev. Pat Robertson talking about the Saint family. He offered a pamphlet, “Seeds of the Martyrs” which I asked for via the telephone. It is about the missionary work of Nathaniel, Rachel and others who served in Ecuador. I learned from this pamphlet that eventually through Rachel’s efforts, contact was made with a man named “Gikita.” He was the oldest living member of the tribe of savages who had slain the young missionaries. When he learned that the missionaries had the guns to defend themselves, but chose not to use them lest the savages die without having known Christ, he vowed never to kill again.
Sometimes I tell this story to visitors to the Cathedral when we are looking at Mr. Saint’s grisaille window in the Nave.
Lower Moreland Township produced a pamphlet, “Self-Guided Walking Tour of Huntingdon Valley” and it lists the home of Lawrence Saint at 2543 Huntingdon Pike. It also contains this information. “Walk back to the courtyard area to see his barn and glass house…. He sketched Huntingdon Valley townspeople to represent Biblical characters in his [stained glass] windows…. His wife Katherine outlived him, took up residence in the unheated barn, grew her own organic food, and told Bible stories to the neighboring children.”
Now I lay me down to sleep;
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
Isaac Watts 1732
Father, we thank Thee for the night,
And for the pleasant morning light
For rest and food and loving care,
And all that makes the world so fair.
Help us to do the things we should,
To be to others kind and good,
In all we do in work and play
To grow more loving every day. Amen
Several souls
Will come to me today
To hear of Thee.
What I am,
What I say,
Will lead them to Thee,
Or drive them away.
Stand by me, Lord, I pray.
I was a poor soul in the depths of despair,
Who climbed to the heights in answer to prayer.