Day: October 17, 2016

* I was visiting a friend of mine in Los Angeles when we were awakened around 6am by telephone call from her sister-in-law who lives on the East Coast. She was quite worried because she said, “Are you okay? I just heard on the radio that you had an earthquake about eight o’clock this morning.” “No, we didn’t,” my friend replied, “everything is fine here.” There was a short pause and then her sister-in-law said, “Oh, I forgot, we are three hours ahead of you.”

At the New York Times a big story came across the wire of an earthquake in California. The junior editor read the news and said, “this is front page stuff.” We have to get this into today’s edition. He took the story to the city editor and said “Maybe we should stop the presses.” The city editor thought for a moment and nodded his agreement. The news editor said, “I have been with the paper 43 years and I have never had a chance to issues the order to stop the presses. Can I do it this time?”  The boss gave him the permission. So the city editor screwed up his courage, picked up the phone, dialed the pressroom, took a deep breath and said, “Stop the presses. We have another story.” The press supervisor replied, “We haven’t started them yet.”

A census taker in a rural area went up to a farmhouse and knocked. When a woman came to the door, he asked her how many children she had and their ages. She said, “Les’ see now, there’s the twins, Sally and Billy, they’re eighteen. And the twins, Seth & Beth, they’re sixteen. And the twins, Penny and Jenny, they’re fourteen.” “Hold on!” said the census taker, “Did you get twins every time?” The woman answered, “Heck no, there were hundreds of times we didn’t get nothin’.”