Joke Night

We just got back from the island. Tomorrow we have a tour to Guerrero Viejo with a load of viejitos, and our friends Don and Linda are going with us. Ought to be fun.

We decided to meet them at Fishbones, a normally innocuous bar / grill on the bay. It also has one of the only fishing piers around, so it’s always fun watching people waste money on generally unproductive waters. Mikey, our old friend from the Brewery now bartends there, and we go there sometimes on Wednesday nights while the kids are at church activities. Besides cold Shiner Bock beer (the national beer of Texas), they make one of the best burgers around.

I should’ve known something was up tonight when Mikey turned on the PA system that's normally reserved for the evening crooner who plays there. He plays about a thousand different songs, a la John Denver a real folksinger-wannabe, but he wasn’t there tonight. “What’s up with this?”, I thought to myself.

It wasn’t long till we began to find out, as a buttload of winter Texans began to stream in….this couldn’t be good.

And it wasn’t.

Turns out it was “Joke night” at Fishbones, a night when chingos of touristas get together and tell jokes to try and win a freebe dinner. Ah, the mention of anything free to a bunch of winter Texans brings out a feeding frenzy.

So we sit there trying to hold down our normally otherwise tasty food while a bunch of lutefisk eating retirees from Illinois, Missouri and Wisconsin told jokes. Terrible jokes. Where did these people learn this type of crap? We listened to jokes about transgenders, anuses’, Viagra, various bodily functions and other assorted sophomoric mouth-squirt. All the while we were snickering, not at their jokes, but at their apparent lack of shame. We began the comparison game too…..

After we hurriedly ate and paid the bill, my friend Don told us to go ahead, and we exited in somewhat, disgust. Once outside Don came up behind us, having left from the back exit, walking to the parking lot along the pier. He was snickering as he told us the following story:

“ I grabbed the Microphone and looked out at the crowd, and they all had big grins on their faces. I told them that I was from Texas, from the Island, and during the summer time, when they’re gone…..we tell jokes too".....

..... I asked ‘em “ Do you wanna hear one?” Of course, they all anxiously nodded, grinning from ear to ear".


"I said, OK, here goes":

“What’s the difference between a winter Texan and a canoe?”….

"Nobody made a guess, so I told ‘em”:

“Sometimes a canoe tips!”

Don chuckled and said; “The smiles instantly melted from there faces, and you could hear the ceiling fan, and the ice in their drinks”. “That’s when I took the exit, stage left, and went out the back, along the pier, out here”.