A traveler was driving through Arkansas when he lost his way and got off the main highway. As he drove by, he saw rows and rows of pigsties and pigpens and pigs running in fields and pigs wallowing in mud. Suddenly, his eye caught something really strange. He did a double take, muttered to himself and then looked a third time. He wondered if he had seen correctly – it looked like a pig with a wooden leg!
He found the lane to the farm and drove up into the farmyard, where he was met by the farmer. “Excuse me,” the traveler said. “I was just driving by and looking at all your pigs, and I noticed something that I just had to stop and ask about. Tell me, did I see right? Is there really a pig out there with a wooden leg?”
The farmer smiled. “Oh, that would be old Caesar. He’s the finest pig a man could ever hope to have – and smart! Well, let me tell you a little about that pig. You see that barge down there on the river? That’s a mining dredge, taking out platinum ore. Old Caesar sniffed out the vein and showed us how to set it up. Now that dredge brings me in about $120,000 every year.
“There’s another thing, too, a little more personal. One night a couple of years ago I got to drinking and I guess I had more than I should have. I passed out drunk, fell down and knocked over a lamp. That started a fire in the house and old Caesar smelled the smoke. He came in the back door, got the wife and kid out, roused me up and got me out.
“There is no question about it – that night old Caesar saved all our lives and you know that is not the sort of thing a man is going to forget too easily.”
“Why,” the traveler said, “this is all amazing! I have never heard of a pig like this before! This is fantastic! But tell me, how did he get that wooden leg? Was he in a wreck or something?”
The farmer laughed and said, “Well, naturally, when you have a pig that smart, you don’t want to eat him all at once.”
I’ve seen this in a couple of different contexts – lovely if it were true.
A crowded United Airlines flight was canceled. A single agent was re-booking a long line of inconvenienced travelers. Suddenly, an angry passenger pushed his way to the desk. He slapped his ticket on the counter and said, “I HAVE to be on this flight and it has to be FIRST CLASS.”
The agent replied, “I’m sorry, sir. I’ll be happy to try to help you, but I’ve got to help these folks first; and then I’m sure we’ll be able to work something out.”
The passenger was unimpressed. He asked loudly, so that the passengers behind him could hear, “DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHO I AM?”
Without hesitating, the agent smiled and grabbed her public address microphone. “May I have your attention, please?” she began, her voice heard clearly throughout the terminal. “We have a passenger here at Gate 14 WHO DOES NOT KNOW WHO HE IS. If anyone can help him with his identity, please come to Gate 14”.
With the folks behind him in line laughing hysterically, the man glared at the United Airlines agent, gritted his teeth, and said, “F*** You!” Without flinching, she smiled and said, “I’m sorry sir, you’ll have to get in line for that, too.”
A brilliant young boy was applying for a job with the railways. The interviewer asked him: “Do you know how to use the equipment?”
“Yes”, the boy replied.
“Then what would you do if you realized that two trains, one from this station and one from the next were going to crash because they were on the same track?”
The young applicant thought and replied “I’d press the button to change the points without hesitation.”
“What if the button was frozen and wouldn’t work?”
“I’d run outside and pull the lever to change the points manually”
“And if the lever was broken?”
“I’d get on the phone to the next station and tell them to change the points,” he replied.
“And if the phone was broken and needed an electrician to fix it?”
The boy thought about that one. “I’d run into town and get my uncle”
“Is your uncle an electrician?”
“No, but he’s never seen a train crash before!”