Tall Tales

Michigan winds are fiercest in the spring. Why, just last year, the wind knocked one of our mountains over into a valley. Folks woke up the next day to find themselves living on a plain.
But we Michigan folk just take these happenings as a matter of course. Take my friend Joe, for example. One March, Joe went out onto his porch to eat dessert. He had barely taken a bite out of his fresh apple pie when a wind blew his house over. Keeping his presence of mind, Joe grabbed hold of the branch of a tree to keep from being blown away. Once he had secured himself on the branch, he nabbed one of the boards floating away from his house, and used it to shield him from the wind so he could finish eating his apple pie.
'Course, I've heard they also get a pretty mean wind when you cross the border into Canada. There's a story I know about a British Columbia chap named Jake whose dog was blown up against his garage wall one day. That wind blew so hard and so strong that the hound dog starved to death before it quit. Jake had to scrape the poor old dog off the wall with a shovel. And what did he find but that the wind had pushed the hound's shadow right into the surface of the wall. So Jake buried the poor dog under the shadow and wrote his epitaph on it: Doggone. Read More......

To say that the weather in Oklahoma is subject to extremes is an understatement. Instead of rain storms, we get dust storms. On the same day, one man can die of sunstroke at noon while his neighbor freezes to death that night.
Now, as you may well suspect, this finicky weather has an adverse effect upon our frogs. I've known the temperature to drop so fast that our frogs are stuck with their heads above the ice. One bull frog I seen musta been caught in the middle of a leap, because he was sprawled across the ice with the tip of one foot caught inside!
But the temperature is not our only weather phenomenon. No sir. The winds in Oklahoma are noteworthy too. We natives have a crowbar hole drilled through an outside wall. We use it to test the wind. You stick a crowbar through the hole, and if it bends, then the wind is normal. But if the crowbar breaks, well, then best to stay in until the wind dies down some. Read More......

California must be the healthiest state in the union, yes sir! I know of one chap who's grandfather lived to be 200 years old. The old man got awful tired of living after awhile, but couldn't seem to sicken and die.
Finally, his relatives tactfully suggested he try traveling away from California. And sure enough, it worked. The old man took sick not long after leaving and died.
It was part of his last request that they bury him in California; so his heir had his body shipped home. But wouldn't you know it, as soon as he crossed the border into California, the old man revived and rose right out of his coffin, as spry as ever. His heir suggested more travel, but the old man decided to stick it out until his time came. Read More......

You can talk 'til you're blue in the face about the thickest of fogs in ye merry olde England, but I'm tellin' you now, sure as I'm standing here, that England's fogs don't hold nothing over them thick fogs which roll in over the Bay of Fundy here in Maine. These ain't your little pea soupers, you can betcher life. These fogs is so thick you can drive a nail into them and hang yer hat on it. It's the honest truth.
One of my neighbors works a fishing boat, but he can't do nothin' when a Maine fog comes rolling into the bay. He always saves up his chores for a foggy day. One day, the fog came rollin' in overnight, and my friend knew there wasn't to be no fishin' that day. So he decides his roof needs shingling. He got started at the shingling right after breakfast, and didn't come down 'til dinner.
"Maude, we got a mighty long house," he told his wife over supper. "Took me all day to shingle."
Well, Maude knew right enough that they lived in a small house. After all, she'd been cleanin' it for nigh on twenty years, so who would know better? She went outside to take a look. And I'll be jiggered if she didn't discover that my neighbor had shingled right past the edge of the roof and out onto the fog! Read More......

Back in the early days, the Plains folk were often in need of a good drought buster during the hot summer months. The sun would shine and shine, and the clouds would scuttle right quick over the Plains without dropping rain. One year, it got so bad that Febold Feboldson, that legendary Swede who could bust the driest drought in a day, got annoyed. He liked his fishin', right enough, and there was no fishin' to be had in that drought. So he sat down and thought up a way to bust that there drought.
Febold Feboldson decided to build huge bonfires around all the lakes in the region. If he kept the fires real hot, the lake water would evaporate and form clouds. Febold set to work at once hauling wood and building bonfires. Soon, there were so many clouds in the sky on account of all the vaporizing water that they bumped into one another and made rain.
Once the pump was primed, so to speak, the rains came regularly again. But were the settlers happy? No sir. Now they had no place to swim! Read More......

Well, some folks don't like the weather in Arizona, but I ain't one of 'em. Why, the air in Arizona is so fine, tourists stop over the state line just to fill their tires with it. Course, Arizona does get rather hot. But since we started shippin' in ice from California, our hens don't lay hard boiled eggs no more.
As for folks who hate rain, why Arizona is just the spot. We haven't seen a drop of rain in Arizona since Noah illegally parked his ark at the top of Mount Ararat. It's so dry, we have to take our frogs to the pool to teach 'em how to swim. And never you mind saving up for a rainy day, cause you'll never get to spend yer money.
So there it is in a nutshell. Why I like Arizona. Arizona is full of fine air and fine days. Makes it great fer all them tourists who get a hankering to drive to that Grand Canyon one of our old timers dug up while his wife wheeled the dirt away. Read More......