Arizona Humor

ARIZONA HUMOR Divine Purchase

My Uncle Joe, who lived with his wife in a mobile home park just west of the Superstition Mountains, decided to sell his old pickup truck. "The only one who would buy that old truck in July is Jesus," proclaimed Aunt Kay. Uncle Joe ran an ad in The Arizona Republic anyway, and on the last day it appeared a man called and said he wanted to come out and look. He did, and he bought the truck. As he was signing the bill of sale, Aunt Kay read his name out loud: Jesus Hernandez.

Dry Humor

After living in Phoenix for about a year, I had done a considerable amount of bragging to my best friend and her husband in Texas about how beautiful the Arizona desert is. I boasted about the incredible weather, gorgeous sunsets, dramatic mountain terrain, and wonderful desert atmosphere. So, naturally, I was excited to show it off to them when they passed through the state on their vacation that year. But the day they came to town, much to my dismay, we had a terrible storm. Overwhelmed with regret, I pouted, "I can't believe this. The one day you're here, it has to rain." Trying his best to make light of it, my friend's husband replied with a smirk, "But it's a dry rain."

desert is. I boasted about the incredible weather, gorgeous sunsets, dramatic mountain terrain, and wonderful desert atmosphere. So, naturally, I was excited to show it off to them when they passed through the state on their vacation that year. But the day they came to town, much to my dismay, we had a terrible storm. Overwhelmed with regret, I pouted, "I can't believe this. The one day you're here, it has to rain." Trying his best to make light of it, my friend's husband replied with a smirk, "But it's a dry rain."

Parish Blues

Upon attending one of my first church services in Arizona, I listened to the minister lament that it was difficult to get his message across to the congregation. "It's so beautiful here in the winter," he said, "that heaven doesn't interest them. And it's so hot in the summer that hell doesn't scare them."

Right of Way

Driving through Phoenix on a typically hot day in July, I became confused at a four-way stop. I had been talking to my husband and hadn't noticed who arrived at the intersection first, me or the other driver. As I reached to turn the air-conditioning down, I asked my husband, "Who has the right-of-way?" "Well, he does, of course," he replied confidently. "But why?" I wondered. "I'm on the right." "Yes, but he has his windows down."

Hay Fires

Time was when stacks of baled alfalfa weighing 300 to 400 tons dotted the fertile farm fields around Tempe, Mesa, Gilbert, and Chandler instead of wall-to-wall subdivisions. Periodically, one of the hay stacks would go up in smoke, usually from a lightning strike or spontaneous combustion. But in poor market conditions, arson was sometimes suspected as insurance settlements looked pretty good. One day in the 1920s, I rode by a friend's house the day after he lost a 300-ton stack to a fire and stopped to ask his small son about it. "Do you know what caused the fire?" I asked. "Well," the child responded, "the insurance man hasn't decided yet, but me and my dad are pretty sure it was 'constipanious corruption.'"

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