Arizona Humor

Arizona Humor FRONTIER ECONOMICS

A cowboy, looking glum, entered the Snowflake Barber Shop and climbed into a chair.

"How are things going?" the barber asked.

"Things are terrible," he replied. "I just lost $10,000."

"How in the world did you lose $10,000?" the concerned barber asked.

"Well, it was like this," the cowboy said. "Cattle prices just went up, and I don't have any."

Janet Farnsworth Snowflake

LIBRARY ON WHEELS

When I drove the Yuma Library's bookmobile, one of my stops was at the Lutheran church school.

One afternoon while waiting for my young patrons to get out of class, a boy I'd never seen stepped inside the van.

"Pardon me, ma'am," he said politely, "are you the bookkeeper?"

Ruth Burke Willcox

ANIMAL SOUNDS

One day our two-year-old son, Tim, was restless, so my husband and I decided to take him for a ride on the desert and teach him about his surroundings. As we drove along, a caccactus wren flew by. "Do you know what sound those little birds make?" I asked. "Tweet, tweet," he said. Later we saw some cattle. "Do you know what sound cows make?" "Moo," he responded.

Then, to our surprise, a jackrabbit jumped out of the brush and dashed across the road in front of our car. I asked again. "Do you know what kind of sound that rabbit would make?"

He thought for a moment, then said, "What's up, Doc?"

Renay Kerr Mesa

MODERN TECHNOLOGY

In South Tucson one day, I saw a woman and her grandson approach an automatic teller machine at the local bank.

A man was already in the midst of a transaction, so the grandmother and the boy stood behind him and waited.

Just then the man's pager went off very loudly.

The boy had never heard a pager before. His eyes got very wide, and he shouted: "Watch out, Grandma, I think he's going to back up."

Tom Farrell Tucson

FIRE RANGER

One morning an inexperienced replacement on a fire tower in the Coconino National Forest reported a smoke sighting that no other tower could confirm.

Lacking a precise location, the smokechaser started to check the countryside following the lookout's bearing and climbing a tree or a ridge from time to time to get a glimpse of the elusive smoke.

Eventually, he came to the forest boundary and realized he had been following the smoke from the sawmill at Winslow some 40 miles away.

"I never caught up with that smoke," he radioed the dispatcher, "but I chased the sunavagun clean out of the forest."

Dean Cook Glendale

WEATHER FORECAST

At our Tucson travel office, an out-of-state couple asked what the weather conditions would be like at the Grand Canyon in April.

By way of example, I told them about my trip to the Canyon the previous midApril.

"The weekend before I left, the temperatures were in the 70s," I said. "The next weekend they had 16 inches of snow." The couple listened politely, then one of them remarked, "But we won't be going on a weekend."

Sharron Boyles Tucson

MUST BE A SAGITTARIUS

My grandson, John Phillip, was getting a haircut from his mother's stylist when a woman entered the shop and said, "My, what a handsome boy. You must be four or five years old."

"I'm four, but next month I'll be five," John said.

"Well, then, you must be a Sagittarius."

"No," John replied, "I'm a Republican."

Phillip M. Turkovich Phoenix

REMEMBER THE FLOOD

One July while traveling through Arizona, I stopped at a small highway cafe near Tucson. The day was very hot and dry.

While waiting for my order, another traveler arrived. Wiping the sweat from his brow, he quipped to a deeply tanned old-timer sitting at the counter, "When was the last time it rained around here?"

The old man looked at him and replied, "Son, you remember in the Bible when it says it rained 40 days and 40 nights?"

"Well, yes, but . . ."

"We got an inch."

Douglas Irving Bridgeport, TX

TO SUBMIT HUMOR

Send us a short note about your humorous experiences in Arizona, and we'll pay $75 for each one we publish.

We're looking for short stories, no more than 200 words, that deal with Arizona topics, and have a humorous punch line.

Send them to Humor, Arizona Highways, 2039 W. Lewis Ave., Phoenix, AZ 85009. Please enclose your name, address, and telephone number with each submission.

We'll notify those whose stories we intend to publish, but we cannot acknowledge or return unused submissions.