The Observant Hoss, and Hannibal

You know how us scientist types love to experiment. So it was that I spent Saturday in the gentlemen's convenience at the local Greyhound station, doing some work for my sociology treatiste doctorage. All day Saturday. What I'm doing there is testing my powers of observation, of which I got plenty.

When the men passengers would come into the pottyhouse to relieve theyselves, I would check out their package. To about every ninth one I would say: "My guess is you're traveling with a guy who's a smoker." And EVERY time I was right. One of these bozos finally screwed up enough courage to say: "That's right, but how did you know?"

And Hoss says, "You got nicotine stains on your thang."

(I gotta get over my fixation on tobacco.)

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We got us one of those child prodigals here in The Home for Old People, name of Feelgood Sockhanes. Well, he's not a child; he's 84. But he can't tie his own shoes, and can't feed himself proper. Peas just roll off his knife, down his chest and on the floor. He's got three times the number of carpet beetles under his chair than I have.

But Feelgood is a history freak. He know every piece of history ever histed. So this morning he drops a pearl on me.

Feelgood: "Hoss, you remember the story of Hannibal crossing the Alps?"

Hoss: "Why, yes, Mr. Sockhanes, I think about that every day."

Feelgood: "Well, you probably got it down pat wrong. It weren't Hannibal at all, it were his brother Lecter. And you prolly didn't know that on the way up the Alps Lecter's men got sore hungry, so Lecter strangled three elephants with his bare hands and bare teeth to get enough blubber to feed the troops."

Hoss: "That the end of the story?"

Feelgood: "Well, except for when they locked Lecter up in the Looney Bin. Everybody knows you can't get blubber off an elephant."

Feelgood: "Remind me to tell you sometime about Lewis and Clark and the studies they did in Samoa."