Sometimes laughter is the best medicine.




In the midst of all that may bother us—crime, drugs, poisons in the water, poor health—people still take time to make each other laugh. If you listen on the street corners, in the cafes, at the kitchen tables of America, you'll hear people telling funny stories and jokes. Hometown humor helps pull us through. In this book, Loyal Jones and Billy Edd Wheeler have gathered the best of America's hometown humor.

The selections range from one-liners (“My wife's cooking was so bad, the flies got together to mend the screens”) to epigrams (“To do good is noble, but to tell others to do good is also noble and a lot less trouble”), to longer stories (like the one about why the Devil tried to give Oral Roberts, Jim Bakker, and Jimmy Swaggart back to St. Peter after they were assigned to his place). Contributors include regular folks, as well as celebrities like Sarah Ophelia Cannon (a.k.a. Minnie Pearl), Tom T. Hall, John Ed McConnell, the late Sen. Sam J. Ervin, and the nine students of the Clinton County Elementary School in Clinton County, Kentucky.