The Coffee Place's Joke Stack
BBS: Ozark
Date: 08-16-94 (20:50) Number: 40
From: JAMES MCMURRIN Refer#: NONE
To: ALL Recvd: NO
Subj: Roast Elephant, anyone? Conf: (40) JOKE
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The following is an excerpt from "The Jot 'Em Down Journal', the official publication of the National Lum and Abner Society. They interviewed Shirley Lauck Babcock, oldest daughter of Chet Lauck (aka Lum Edwards) about growing up while her parents were in Hollywood producing the L & A show-
"Do you remember the famous Christmas when your dad received an unusual present from his pal Corny Stroube?
In 1946, on Christmas morning my dad had bought my mother a new car as her present. We always had a tradition that nobody could go down to the tree until everybody was presentable, and then everybody went to the tree together. So we went downstairs and my dad handed my mother the keys to this car, and told her that something out in front of the house was hers, and these were the keys to it. We opened the front door, and out there in front of our house was an ELEPHANT, posing like elephants do, with one foot up and one foot down and the trunk curled in the air... on the back of the elephant was a sign that said, "Merry Christmas to the Laucks from the Stroubes." The Stroubes were very close friends of my parents' who lived in Corsicana, Texas. Well, everybody was in shock at this point, and said, "Oh, isn't that a funny joke, ha ha," but then the phone rang and it was a feed company; they said, "We have five tons of hay for you, where do you want us to deliver it?" And pretty soon we weren't so sure this joke was a joke! Then the caretaker with the elephant said, "I want you to know that I'm only here until three o'clock, and then you're going to have to find someone else to take care of the elephant, or learn how to do it yourself." Then, through the phone calls from friends wishing us a merry Christmas and so forth, pretty soon the press found out about this. Well, that was all we needed. The editors were all saying, "Come on, we've got this great story," and the poor reporters certainly did not want to leave their families on Christmas morning, for goodness sake... so they didn't; they brought their families WITH them!! You have never seen so many people at one house at one time, and all of a sudden my mother looked over and saw a bunch of strange children sitting there opening the packages under OUR Christmas tree!
Needless to say, it turned out that the elephant was indeed a trained circus elephant named Bonnie, and she did go back to her circus. But as a comeback to all of this, my parents thought and thought to try to come up with a way to get back at the Stroubes for what they had done. They finally went to a museum or someplace and ordered the skeleton of an elephant. Now, the Stroubes had a home there in California which they had just bought, and it had a huge living room that was completely empty and had not been furnished yet. So my dad had this skeleton of an elephant reassembled there in the Stroubes' living room, and on it he hung a sign that said, "Thanks, it was delicious!" "
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