Grave Old JOW #645

I have some old jokes this week including a few classic lines from tombstones.  It takes a certain confidence to put a joke on a grave marker, but they are out there. 

Before I get into my main subject I have a trio of valuable definitions.  I know a bunch of lawyers and one lovely expert witness.  They are responsible for providing us with this clear and cogent explanation of the differences between experts, lawyers, and judges.

·         Experts are people who know a great deal about very little and who go along learning more and more about less and less until they know practically everything about nothing.

·         Lawyers, on the other hand, are people who know very little about many things and keep learning less and less about more and more until they know practically nothing about everything.

·         Judges are people who start out knowing everything about everything, but end up knowing nothing about anything because of their constant association with experts and lawyers.

…………………..

Here is one from Bill the Bali Man,

A dapper man ‘of a certain age’ sashayed into the bar at the retirement community.  He was dressed to the nines right down to a handkerchief in the pocket of his stylish blazer.  All the silver foxes eyed him with interest as he assessed the ladies who were sipping their white wines.  Seeing an unaccompanied younger (still in her 70’s) woman at the bar, he sat down next to her and asked her the classic pick-up line of the elderly.

“So, do I come here, often?”

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Hospital regulations require a wheel chair for patients being discharged. A young nurse found one elderly gentleman already dressed and sitting on the bed with a suitcase at his feet, who insisted he didn't need any help to leave the hospital.
After a chat about rules being rules, he reluctantly let her to wheel him to the elevator.
On the way down she asked him if his wife was meeting him.
'I don't know,' he said 'She's still upstairs in the bathroom changing out of her hospital gown. '

++++++++++++++++++

A little old man shuffled slowly into an ice cream parlor and pulled himself slowly, painfully, up onto a stool.  After catching his breath, he ordered a banana split.
The waitress asked kindly, 'Crushed nuts?'
'No,' he replied, 'Arthritis.'

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·         I'm getting into swing dancing. Not on purpose. Some parts of my body are just prone to swinging.

·         It's scary when you start making the same noises as your coffeemaker

·         These days about half the stuff in my shopping cart says, "For fast relief."

·         I have figured out how to prevent sagging.   Just eat till the wrinkles fill out.

·         Don't let aging get you down. It's too hard to get back up!

All this thought about getting old got me thinking about cemeteries.  We have gotten away from the old tradition of epitaphs.  Too bad; in a civilization increasingly compressed it seems only appropriate to reduce our life to a few lines.  I know what I would like my epitaph to be:

Here lies Thomas Pinney; He achieved great wealth and fame late in life.

Alas, the words on our headstones are inscribed by someone else and not always to the advantage of the deceased.  Here are a few allegedly true epitaphs.

nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

On the grave of Ezekiel Aikle in East Dalhousie Cemetery, Nova Scotia:
        Here lies Ezekial Aikle Age 102: The Good Die Young.

In a London, England cemetery:
        Ann Mann: Here lies Ann Mann, Who lived an old maid But died an old Mann. Dec. 8, 1767
In a Ribbesford, England, cemetery:
        Anna Wallace: The children of Israel wanted bread. And the Lord sent them manna.
        Old clerk Wallace wanted a wife, And the Devil sent him Anna.

Playing with names in a Ruidoso, New Mexico, cemetery:
        Here lies Johnny Yeast, Pardon me For not rising.

Memory of an accident in a Uniontown, Pennsylvania, cemetery:
        Here lies the body of Jonathan Blake: Stepped on the gas Instead of the brake.

A lawyer's epitaph in England:
        Sir John Strange: Here lies an honest lawyer, And that is Strange.

Someone determined to be anonymous in Stowe, Vermont:
        I was somebody. Who, is no business of yours.

Lester Moore was a Wells, Fargo Co. station agent for Naco, Arizona in the cowboy days of the 1880's. He's buried in the Boot Hill Cemetery in Tombstone, Arizona:
        Here lies Lester Moore.  Four slugs from a .44.  No Les No More.

In a Georgia cemetery:
        "I told you I was sick!"

John Penny's epitaph in the Wimborne, England, cemetery:

        Reader, if cash thou art in want of any.  

        Dig six feet deep, and thou wilt find a Penny.

On Margaret Daniels grave at Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, Virginia:
        She always said her feet were killing her but nobody believed her.

In a cemetery in Hartscombe, England:
        On the 22nd of June - Jonathan Fiddle - Went out of tune.

Someone in Winslow, Maine, didn't like Mr. Wood:
        In Memory of Beza Wood Departed this life Nov. 2, 1837 Aged 45 yrs.
        Here lies one Wood enclosed in wood, One Wood Within another.
        The outer wood Is very good: We cannot praise The other.

On a grave from the 1880's in Nantucket, Massachusetts:
        Under the sod and under the trees Lies the body of Jonathan Pease.
        He is not here, there's only the pod: Pease shelled out and went to God.

The grave of Ellen Shannon in Girard, Pennsylvania, is almost a consumer tip:

Who was fatally burned March 21, 1870 by the explosion of a lamp filled with "R.E. Danforth's Non-Explosive Burning Fluid"

Oops!

        Harry Edsel Smith of Albany, New York: Born 1903--Died 1942
        Looked up the elevator shaft to see if the car was on the way down. It was.

In a Thurmont, Maryland cemetery:
        Here lies John Norris - Atheist

       All dressed up and no place to go.

But does he make house calls?
        Dr. Fred Roberts, Brookland, Arkansas: Office upstairs

And my all-time personal favorite

A widow wrote this epitaph in a Vermont cemetery:
        Sacred to the memory of my husband John Barnes who died January 3, 1803.
        His comely young widow, aged 23, has many qualifications of a good wife, and         yearns to be comforted.