TRIVIA, RIDDLE, STUFFED BAKED POTATO WITH ZUCCHINI, JERRY CLOWER, CARTOON HUMOR

HY JOHNNY CAN’T READ?
BY JERRY CLOWER

Every now and then I get aggravated.  Here lately I been reading in the paper, hearing on the radio, and watching on the TV, and everybody is saying, “Why can’t Johnny read?”  I got to thinking about this.

The other day I read about a bunch of Ph.D’s and some folks what met for about three days at a seminar.  At the end of the seminar they commenced to telling people why Johnny can’t read.  I got sick at some of the reasons they gave.  One of them learned fellows said Johnny can’t read no better than he can is due to the energy crisis.  Johnny didn’t go to school enough.

The main reason Johnny can’t read is :  Johnny don’t give a care whether he can read or not.  Now, I ain’t talking about them folks that’s handicapped or got bad eyes.  I’m talking about folks that are able-bodied, but yet the society we live in today tells them how underprivileged they are and how awful it is they weren’t born into affluency.  This is the United States of America:  if you want to do it and you got that bulldog, hang-on foreverishness, you can can be a winner!

Another reason Johnny can’t read is that Johnny’s mama and daddy don’t give a care whether he can read or not.  They ain’t interest in him.  When they find out he can’t read, then they go to blaming the teacher of the school.  I know some of them people.  I’ve talked to them about it.  I say, “Listen here.  What’s your little boy’s teacher’s name?”

They’d say, “We don’t know.  Never have met her.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, don’t it?  They find out he can’t read, then they get to looking for a patsy.  They want to blame it on somebody else, when they ought to be more concerned about their own child.  Parents and guardians ought to be more concerned about whether their children can read.

But don’t tell me it’s the energy crisis.

Let me tell you about the energy crisis we had at East Fork Consolidated High School when I went to school — we didn’t have no energy crisis, ’cause we didn’t have no energy of no kind.  We didn’t have no running water, we didn’t have no natural gas, we didn’t have no electricity.  We had a big wood heater; if you got cold, you put some wood in there and built a fire.  When you wanted to go to the bathroom, you raised your hand and said, “Teacher, may I go under the hill?”

Those of us in that underprivileged school that wanted to learn how to read, learned how.  We learned how to read.

Talk about not going to school enough.  We started in September and didn’t go but half a day, because we got out early to pick cotton.  Then when spring would come along after Christmas, we would get out half a day to go home and plow and plant crops.  We didn’t have but eight months school all told, and we didn’t go but half of the time then.  But those of us who wanted to learn how to read had mamas and daddys that told us we wasn’t underprivileged — we had the right to learn how to read if we wanted to.  I studied by coal oil lamp.  If f some of these people of today had known my situation I was in, they’d told me how bad off I was, and I’d probably growed up not being able to read.  But nobody told me!

The other day I got to thinking about them eight folks that finished East Fork Consolidated High School in the year 1944.  Whatever happened to that underprivileged bunch that went to that school during that energy crisis?

The first one I can think of, he’s a retired army colonel.  The next one, he’s a retired commander, served in the United States Navy.  The next one became very wealthy from real estate.  The next one, he’s a top chemist for a petrochemical company.  The next one, he’s a a top geologist for a big oil company.  The other two — they were girls — married well.  And the last one:  those who vote on such matters have said for twelve years that he is the number country comic in all the world!

COPYRIGHT 1992 JERRY CLOWER
STORIES FROM HOME
Reprinted with permission by University Press of Mississippi