Picture it—Knoxville, Tennessee, 2025. My nephew, that woman I married and I were eating in a popular local restaurant. As part of her meal, that woman ordered pancakes and asked for syrup to go with them.
Remember that we are in the Appalachian area. While noisy restaurants can make it difficult to hear, local dialect can add to the problem.
Consider—how do you pronounce the word “Syrup”? (Sir-up”? “Surp”?
“Seer-up”?)
As the waitress flew by on one of her busy treks, the woman hailed her and asked for more “surp”. She was even holding the container in her hand.
The waitress said, More what?”
More “surp”.
“You want more SOAP?” the waitress asked in astonishment.
Draw your own conclusion, Dear Reader. Now you know why restaurants provide crayons. They’re not always for the children’s amusement.
Entertainment is hard to come by these days. Consider my friend, a fine gentleman who was requesting prayer for himself. My friend said his doctor gave him a surprise during the previous week—he was going to refer him to a horticulturist for blood work.
My friend’s wife laughingly corrected him, “He’s sending you to a hematologist, not a horticulturist.”
“Oh well,” my friend said. “I never could keep those medical terms straight.”
I told my friend that I hoped his visit to the hematologist did not result in the need for services from a horticulturist.
A sweet lady once told her Sunday School class that she got so many calls on her cell phone from insurance and Medicare providers that it drove her crazy. “This phone is my worst enema!” she exclaimed.
I refrained from commenting on that one.
I leave you, Dear Reader, with one final bit of humor. Every year Tennessee public school systems are required to send the Occupational Survey home with all students for completion. The purpose of the form is to determine if any students are eligible to receive migrant services from the local educational agency. After several years of faithfully filling out this same form for several siblings, one parent finally had enough. The form was returned with the following written in large, all capital letters across the front of the form—WERE FROM MERICA!
Take care as you travel life’s dusty roads this week, Dear Reader. Being distracted can get you destructed! Just ask the electrician with no eyebrows.

ANSWER TO QUESTION OF THE WEEK # 72
Why should you never confide with vacuum cleaners? (ANSWER: Never confide in vacuum cleaners. They’re always gathering dirt.)

QUESTION OF THE WEEK # 73
What do you call a hippie’s wife? (See next week’s article in historicunioncounty.com for the answer.)

THINK ABOUT THIS:
I hate it when people act all intellectual and talk about Mozart, when they've never even seen one of his paintings.