The Joke’S on You, This Time

By Charles Rice

Like my first literary attempt, The Jokes on Me, this book is primarily a collection of editorials and letters to the editor of the local newspaper, along with running commentary and some attempted justification for the foolishness. The first book would not exist if it hadnt been for the insistence of several people that all this should be in a book.

Most of the letters to the editor in this first section were written under the guise of the Greater Sycamore Valley Chamber of Commerce, an entity that existed only in the minds of its readers. Some of the letters were just personal reflections on the situation of the day. Some of the letters may seem terribly redundant, but I never was one to pass up an opportunity to tell the same joke twice.

The second and most important part of this book contains Sunday Guest Editorials, which I have written for publication in the local newspaper. These editorials deal with issues of a religious nature and were written in the hope that they would stimulate readers to contemplate their own relationship with the One who spoke and all things came into existence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 26, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543414615

Charles Rice

“This Time the Joke’s On You” is a sequel to the author’s first book (2007), “The Joke’s On Me and Other Stuff I Have Written.”  As with the first book, you will find this edition also contains a compilation of the author’s letters to the editor and Sunday Guest Editorials which have appeared in the Independence (Kansas) Daily Reporter.              The first section of the book deals with letters to the editor that are, for the most part, tongue-in-cheek jabs at the crazy world we live in.  The majority of the letters are written under the satirical and totally fictitious “Greater Sycamore Valley Chamber of Commerce.”     The latter part of the book contains Sunday Guest Editorials dealing with a wide variety of religious topics and everyone’s need to seek out and find God.     The author, Charles Rice, is known to many in the area as “Sir Charles.”  His quick wit and keen sense of the absurd have garnered a large following in Southeast Kansas.     Charles and his wife, Meredith, own and manage a sign shop and locksmith business out of their home near Sycamore, Kansas.  Charles also pastors the Bethel Church of God in Neodesha, Kansas.  Charles and Meredith also do a monthly television program as part of the Gospel Hour which is seen on the local cable network.     This is the fourth work produced by the author.  His first book, “The Joke’s On Me and Other Stuff I Have Written,” was published by Wordclay. His second book, “The Stones of Decision,” also published by Wordclay, deals with the stones that were part of the breast plate of Aaron the High Priest of Israel.  “When The Walls Came Tumbling Down,” also published by Exlibris, relates the author’s life-long love affair with waterfowl hunting.

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Copyright © 2017 by Charles Rice.

ISBN:                Softcover                978-1-5434-1460-8

                          eBook                     978-1-5434-1461-5

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Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. [Biblica]

Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved. Website

Rev. date: 04/24/2017

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CONTENTS

Forward

Letter-Icy

Section 1

Letters To The Editor

Chapter 1 My Country Tis Of Thee

Chapter 2 The Chamber Gets Teed Off

Chapter 3 Seriously?

Chapter 4 ⁴Th Of July

Chapter 5 Gullible’s Travels

Chapter 6 Close To Religious

Chapter 7 Global Warming?

Chapter 8 The Great State Of Taxes

Chapter 9 Edgy-Cation

Chapter 10 Health Care?

Chapter 11 Poly-Ticks

Chapter 11 ½ High Adventure In The Land Of Fruits And Nuts

Chapter 12 Chamber Fun Raisers

Section 2

Sunday Guest Editorials

Gone With The Wind

Mighty Big Words

Fault Lines

You Know?

Discernment

Long Division

Now And Then

Spiritual Dinning

Revival

Selective Indignation?

Gathering

Cross? What Cross?

Savior?

Procrustes?

The Spirit Of Christmas

What Have We Done?

Joy?

Go Fish!

No Vacancy

What Flavor?

The Me In Us All

Whose Job Is It?

By This …

Service Or Serve-Us?

Ho Hum Or Hallelujah?

Truth Or Fiction

Who’s To Blame?

In Common

The Pendulum Swings

What Work?

Celebrity

What?

The Great Race

God Is Pro-Life!

Why Mr. Atheist?

I Have A Dream Today

Enough?

Thy Kingdom Come

Do You See It?

Sin Is …

The Race Is On

Cheap?

Who’s Image?

The Land Of Beginning Again

Responsibility?

Blessed Assurance

How We Gonna’ Get There?

Through The Motions

Ad Astra

Value Judgment?

Real Climate Change

Carpe Diem

The Night Watch

Among Us?

Will A Tithe Be Enough?

Do You Know?

No Work – No Food

Our Place In Time

Your Choice

In Love With An Idea?

If I Were A Wealthy Man

The Gifts

An Iffy Situation?

What The World Needs Now

Gone Fishin’

Too Strident?

Ralph

The Gift Of Worship

The Circus Side Show

Unbelief

One

Theology 101

The Higher Fruit

Doing Church

Our Spiritual Compass

Prove All Things

Joy To The World

The Gap

Revising History

Great Expectations

FORWARD, BUT NOT TOO FAST?

Writing a book can be a daunting process, especially when you have nothing meaningful to say. The real struggle is in getting started. How to begin? Perhaps it’s always best to start at the beginning. Brace yourself, Ethel!

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away it was a dark and stormy night. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness … and that age of foolishness, my friends, brings us to the reason for this book.

Proverbs 22:15 tells us: Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; the rod of correction will drive it far from him. My best guess is that, in many ways, I am still a child that flat refused to grow old or be corrected. Oh, yes, I had a certain familiarity with the rod, when I was young. Not to mention the paddle and the belt, but foolishness has always been close at hand … like an old friend. I could no more part with my foolishness than Peter Pan could part with his shadow.

Like my first literary attempt, The Joke’s On Me, this book is primarily a collection of editorials and letters to the editor of the local newspaper along with running commentary and some attempted justification for the foolishness. The most incredible part, and you will quickly find this to be true, is that people actually read this stuff. The first book would not exist if it hadn’t been for the insistence of several people that all this should be in a book. Most of them have since learned their lesson and are several dollars poorer as a result of the purchase.

Most of the letters to the editor in this first section were written under the guise of the Greater Sycamore Valley Chamber of Commerce, an entity which exists only in the minds of its readers. Some of the letters were just personal reflections on the situation of the day. Some of the letters may seem terribly redundant, but I never was one to pass up an opportunity to tell the same joke twice.

Well, the cat is out of the bag. No one, at least in their right mind, has asked for a sequel, but the foolish part of me just can’t let a good joke go to waste. I might as well have a little fun at someone else’s expense. If you purchased this edition, you now know exactly what I mean.

For better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, read on at your own risk. Nothing written here is original … every word has been used before and can be found in an English dictionary; although, I may have made up a couple of new ones along the way. If you find something you don’t understand, don’t worry. I probably didn’t understand it either.

LETTER-ICY

If you had known me when we were growing up and going to school, you would undoubtedly marvel at the idea that I could ever put two letters together, let alone make a sentence. Last thing I ever wanted to do was write. I was going to be a mountain man, living off the land, hunting, fishing, trapping. I couldn’t care less about proper grammatical sentence structure. Now, right here I suspect you’re thinking, Not much has changed. Just remember, the joke’s on you, this time.

Somewhere, in the vicinity of ninth grade English I was exposed to one of the greatest inventions known only to professional writers. The invention was an obviously imaginary fellow by the name of Ibid. You could write anything you wanted to write and if you put Ibid’s name at the bottom of the page everyone thought you were a genius.

Being, now, a man of letters myself, I can join the ranks of the has-been’s and the wanna-be’s. As Pontius Pilate said, What I have written, I have written, (with a little help from the dictionary and spell check). Okay, a lot of help! Picky! Picky! Picky! (Ibid)

The place to begin would normally be where the last book left off, but that would require my going back and reading the first book to see where I left off. The reading thing has always been a problem. I only do that as a last resort and, with the economy being what it is these days, I can’t afford a resort. Reading or asking directions is just not a guy thing. Pretty sure that’s why God created women … so that men could find what they need and get where they are going. That reminds me of a story …

Meanwhile, for those of you who are smitten with indignation over the idea that women are only here on this earth to help men, please keep in mind that this was God’s idea and not mine. Nice idea, though. I like it and have taken advantage of it more than once.

In the book of Proverbs it tells us that: A merry heart does good like a medicine. I believe that! It is my earnest desire that, somewhere in the pages of this book, the reader might find a little humor, a little wisdom and a lot of hope.

Oh, and one more thing, in my last book, I thanked all the little people who helped me put this tome together. The Leprechauns are still not speaking to me.

SECTION 1

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

CHAPTER 1

My Country Tis of Thee

There are some really hot-button issues that crop up from time to time and always there are those who want to fan the flames of discontent. Now and then we simply forget what made this country so great. The following letter was written in response to a newspaper article in which the author used a lot of those five dollar words with a nickel meaning. The premise of his article was the need to keep foreigners out of our country. Not sure which Indian tribe he belonged to, but he is a couple of hundred years too late.

Dear Editor,

During one of our frequent dialectic exchanges, at the Greater Sycamore Valley Chamber of Commerce, the subject of immigration came up and the apparent ataraxia of our respective state and federal officials in dealing with the problem. The whole thing turned into an epistemological adventure.

One of the neighbors was really upset by all the fureners coming into this country. It was quickly pointed out that we are a nation of foreigners. Very few of our ancestors were native to this land. When asked where his folks had originally come form, he wasn’t sure. Jog-raphy wasn’t something he studied too much in school, not to mention history.

If the folks who lived on this land, when my ancestors first came, had the same policy that many advocate today my ancestors would have been rounded up and deported back to Ireland. The Irish were allowed to stay in this country because they were willing to do the work that others would not do. They learned to speak and understand English instead of Gaelic.

Are we better off today because folks let the Irish stay? Maybe that’s too long a debate for this theses, but the point is that we live in the greatest nation on the face of the earth because we were willing to adapt and change; because we were willing to make room for the strangers among us. And, if there is one characteristic that stands out in America’s greatness it is our ability to adapt and overcome obstacles.

Will there be problems? Sure, no doubt about it, both long term and short term problems. But the real question remains … are we, as a nation of free men, big enough to deal with the problems with justice and equity?

As far as I know, Lady Liberty still lifts her lamp beside the golden door. Millions have come in answer to her invitation and we are a better nation as a result. Shall we tarnish that golden door and make Liberty’s invitation a lie, or shall we adapt and grow even greater as a nation?

For the Greater Sycamore Valley Chamber of Commerce …

Dear Editor,

Select members of the Greater Sycamore Valley Chamber of Commerce have, after due consideration on the matter, concluded that you would be doing your readership a great and inestimable service by, from time to time, publishing our Declaration of Independence and all or portions of our Constitution.

One has only to read the Declaration of Independence to see that there are some amazing parallels to our current situation. Most of us take our current government for granted and pay little attention to the loss of freedoms. It was so, then, as it is now. May I share a quote from the Declaration of Independence?

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Perhaps, Abraham Lincoln said it best in his 1838 speech entitled, The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions. Is it unreasonable, then to expect that some man possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time spring up among us? And when such an one does, it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs. Distinction will be his paramount object, and although he would as willingly, perhaps more so, acquire it by doing good as harm, yet, that opportunity being past, and nothing left to be done in the way of building up, he would set boldly to the task of pulling down.

Dear Editor, our best hope for the maintenance and preservation of a free people lies in their knowledge and understanding of the cause and form of the government we have. Your paper can be a powerful instrument in preserving our freedoms.

As Mr. Lincoln said, If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide.

For the Greater Sycamore Valley Chamber of Commerce …

Our First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech is a wonderful gift, but all too often we start speaking before we know what we are talking about. Been there, done that. Part of the fun comes from pointing out the Emperor’s new clothes.

Dear Editor,

Someone asked, again, the other day why they hadn’t read anything lately in the Reporter from the Greater Sycamore Valley Chamber of Commerce. Well, there’s a good explanation for that. Nut season! Every year and especially election years the nuts just seem to fall out of the trees on cue.

One such nut was complaining about Bush’s War and about how the whole Iraq thing was just an oil grab for Bush and Cheney. Didn’t take too long for the neighbors to pick up that nut, dust him off, and toss him to the squirrels.

When asked why he continued to use Bush’s oil in his car and why he continued to eat food produced and delivered by Bush’s oil, he suddenly decided he wanted to be a persimmon instead of a nut. Didn’t fool the local folks one bit, we all know that persimmons aren’t ripe yet and we all know a nut when we see one.

The real reason you haven’t heard much from the Chamber is that most of the members work for a living and have little time for the extravagance of another unnecessary meeting.

So, I have been busy working on a new novel to pacify the nuts. This one will be a Hairy Putter mystery entitled The Missing Links. It’s about a young boy, Hairy, who never grows up and flies all over the world playing golf, and a golf course in Scotland that disappears into the mist and reappears for one day every 100 years. Hairy and his faithful caddy, Fairyday, got a really late tee time and as Hairy tees off on the par 3 eleventh hole with a six iron, into the wind, the course begins to fade into the mist. It looks to, all the world, like Hairy’s tee shot is dead on, but it will be a hundred years before anyone knows whether he got that hole-in-one.

Meanwhile, Hairy discovers a putter called X-Out encased in stone. Fairyday sprinkles pixie dust on the putter and Hairy pulls it out of the stone and immediately goes on the pro tour and becomes the king of golf. There is a lot more to the story. I’m just getting started.

Aren’t you glad we don’t all live in a fantasy world?

For the Greater Sycamore Valley Chamber of Commerce …

Then there are those times when it seems that the nuts are already cracked before they hit the ground. Back when our government decided that all electronic transmissions must be digital and made analog obsolete everyone was going to need a converter box. Getting a converter box, on the other hand, proved to be a major project.

Dear Editor,

This week, one of the members of the Greater Sycamore Valley Chamber of Commerce received