The Best of President Reagan's Humor

I just want to oh I can't resist I'm supposed to quit right here but oh yeah but in light of the quick things I just said I don't know if you know this or not but I have a new hobby I'm collecting stories that I can prove are among the Russians, they invent them themselves, they tell them to each other reveals that they have a great sense of

humor

and also have a somewhat cynical attitude about things in their country and One of these stories, the one I am going to tell you, I told them to General Secretary Gorbachev and he laughed.

The story was about an American and a Russian arguing about their two countries and the Americans said, "Look, in my country, I can get into the Oval Office." I can bang on the

president

's desk and say Mr. President, I don't like the way he runs our country and the Russians said I can do that. Americans say you can. He says yes. I can go to the Kremlin to the general secretary's office. Bang on your desk and say Mr. Secretary General, I do not like the way President Reagan is leading his country, President, Mr. President, distinguished members of Congress, honored guests, and fellow Americans, today is my first State of the Union address. the union before you, the constitutional duty of always.

Like our own republic, President Washington began this tradition in 1790, after reminding the nation that the destiny of self-government and the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty are ultimately at stake in the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people for our friends in the press that places a lot of importance on precision let me tell you that i didn't actually hear george washington say that i can define middle age, that's when you're faced with two temptations and you choose the one that will get you home at nine o'clock. spot. I have a real estate agent who was driving down a back road on his way to look at a property and suddenly he noticed a chicken next to him that was going at his own pace and going 60 miles per hour and suddenly the chicken took off. in front of him and it seemed to him as if the chicken had three legs and then he turned and went along the marked path and entered a corral and the driver who turned into that lane entered the corral there was a farmer there and asked him and said: did you see a The chicken passed by here and the farmer said yes, he said they had three legs and the barber said yes, I raise it that way, I raise it, he says, you do it, he said, how come ?, he said, I just love the thigh and I always did. thigh and now Junior came and he likes it and we got tired of fighting about it so I've been raising three-legged chickens and the driver said, well, how do they taste?

He says I don't know, I haven't been. able to catch one, but there's nothing I enjoy more than a bit of country

humor

. One of the

best

things about having you here is that now I get to tell a farm joke. First I need a setting, but, um, Rick, you're from Kansas, right, okay? It takes place in Kansas, you know, there was an old Kansas farmer who had a piece of land at the bottom of the creek that had never been developed at all, it was all rocks and brush and everything in disrepair and he started clearing it out and hauling it away.

He removed the rocks and then cultivated the soil there and planted a garden that included everything from vegetables to corn and it really became a garden place and he was very proud of what he had done, so one Sunday morning at church after the service asked the preacher. If I didn't stop by to take a look, the preacher came and took a look and said oh, this is wonderful, he said, these are the biggest tomatoes I've ever seen in my life, praise the Lord, he said those green beans. let him crush those melons he said the lord has really blessed this place and look at the height of that corn he said the god has really been good and the old man was listening to all this and he was getting more and more restless and finally he blurted out reverend, I wish that you could have seen it when the man was doing it alone and as he was falling he grabbed a branch that was sticking out of the side of the cliff and he looked down 300 feet to the canyon floor below and then he looked up and said sir is there anyone up there give me faith tell me what to do and a voice from heaven said if you have faith let it go he looked down at the canyon floor and then he looked up and said is there anyone else up there?

I always thought about the importance of communication and the role it plays in what you and I are trying to do and one day a former kicker for the Los Angeles Rams who later became a sportscaster, Danny Villanueva, told me about it. Communications said he had been having dinner at a young baseball player's house with the evaders. The young wife was busy preparing dinner. They were talking about sports and the baby started crying and over her shoulder his busy wife said: The ball player. he changed the baby and he was a young delinquent he felt embarrassed in front of Danny and said what do you mean by changing the baby?

I'm a ball player, that's not my line of work and she turned around and put his hands on her. hips and she communicated, she said, look, snap, you set the diaper like a diamond, you place second base on home plate, you place the baby's butt on the pitcher's mound, you hit the first and third slide down and if It starts to rain, the game continues. I didn't call you, you start again, there are no words that can adequately tell you how bittersweet these days are and the things we would like to say to all of you, you know, I keep remembering the past and, not far away, when somewhere. along the line there would always be a picture of a

president

standing in the old office looking out the window, usually the picture from behind and he is standing there and then his words are quoted as a tag for that picture about this being the loneliest place and what a loner and so on I don't know about them I haven't felt alone for a minute you