Season 1 #5 – Now That's Entertainment

Welcome to NFB Newsline Tennessee Presents, the show that keeps you informed on blindness issues, up to date on innovations, and brings you engaging stories from people like you. Now on with the show.

Hi, everybody, and welcome back to a new episode of NFB Newsline Tennessee Presents. I know it's been a minute since I've been with you. A lot's been happening. I've had to get a new laptop, and I am learning some new editing software. It's called Reaper. It's a really cool program if you like audio editing, and it also does video editing. I haven't gotten that far yet, but I've also been thinking about some new features to add to the podcast, and one of the ones I came up with was Entertainment. Tennessee is just packed with people who have one talent or another. We have storytellers, comedians, singers, dancers, actors, any kind of entertainment you could imagine. So I thought it'd be a good idea to have that as a feature and to start it. I'm going to share with you a comedy routine I did for the first NFB virtual convention. I think it was in 21. I'm not really sure. I think it was. But also with that, I'm trying a new thing with the podcast. It's called Chapters. And what. Chapters is where you can skip from section to section in the podcast. And that's going to be great for longer shows once I get everything in place that I want to have in the podcast. So that's going to be something new that's happening on the show. Some other thoughts that I've had that would be great to do is. I don't know what I'm going to call it yet, but we all have had encounters with people that just totally irritate us, anger us, and also show us that we have a need for more awareness. A good example of that is, you know, when you go somewhere with somebody, people inevitably speak to the person that's with you instead of you. And there's a lot of different ways to handle that. And, you know, each person has their own method of, you know, doing that. So that's going to be one of the discussions I'm going to have on a podcast. What made me think of that is just every day, almost a couple of weeks ago, every day when I went out, I had to educate somebody. And some of the things were, okay, I can understand that. But some of the things were just downright stupid. And I came home, especially on the stupid ones, and made a list. And I know we've all done this you get home after something happens and you're like, ooh, I should have said this or I should have said that. So one of my episodes is going to be about that. So now, without any further ado, here is the comedy routine about my great big wild, weird, wonderful Tennessee family. Enjoy.

I'm coming to you from the great state of Tennessee, where we like our barbecue hot, our catfish caught our chicken fried cicadas when they're in season, and yes, even roadkill. I'm not kidding about the cicadas. I turned on the news the other day and every single one of our local news channels had a different recipe on the best way to prepare and cook as a cater. I was just like wondering one thing, do they taste like chicken? But I'd like to introduce you guys to my great big Tennessee family. We are a interesting bunch, no doubt. Let's take my cousin, his name's Bass. And Bass has a son, John Paul Michael. We call him Catfish for short. And Bass, just like any good daddy, he was wanting to know what his son was going to be when he grew up. You know, maybe what direction, direction he was going to take. And he'd ask him, hey, Catfish, what do you think you want to do when you grow up? And Catfish, like, I don't know. So Bass, he got clever at it. He put down a little test for him. He went in his room and on his desk he laid down a 20 bill, a Bible, a bottle of Jack Daniels and a Playboy magazine. And he thought, well, if the boy keeps the money, then he might be a businessman. If he keeps the Bible, then he might be a preaching man. If he keeps the bottle of Jack Daniels, well, he might be a drinking man. And if he keeps the Playboy magazine, well, he might be one of them womanizing man. So he laid everything out, went behind the door and waited for Catfish to come home. Well, Catfish comes strolling in and dropped his backpack down on the bed and looked over at his desk and saw the stuff that was laying there. He went quick to the 20 bill and he picked it up and put it in his wallet. Bastard behind the door nodding his head, yeah. And then Catfish picked up the Bible and he was flipping through it, reading a little bit. And then he put the Bible on his bookshelf right there in a place of honor next to his popular mechanic subscription. And you know, cat, Catfish then picked up the bottle of Jack Daniels. He twisted off the cap and took him a drink, and he licked his lips and smiled. Then he put the bottle down and he picked up The Playboy magazine. He flipped through it a little bit again. He licked his lips and smiled. Then he put the Playboy magazine and the bottle of Jack Daniels in the bottom drawer where he thought his mom and dadd find it, and he left the room. Well, Bass, he came out from behind the door, and he just kind of looked down a little bit, and then he looked up and threw his hands up in the air and said, oh, good Lord, the boy's gonna be a politician. You know, another really interesting point about Tennessee, and I'm sure a lot of you know is we drink our moonshine from a Mason jar and our Jack Daniels on ice. I'll tell you, I've got this Uncle Joe, he lives up in the mountains of East Tennessee, and he knows a bit about drinking. Well, actually, he knows a lot about drinking. And my Aunt Lou, oh, she cannot stand it. She don't mind, you know, if he nips. Nips here and there a little bit. You know, it's just the thing. But she gets tired because, yeah, he drinks a lot. And she'll hide his moonshine, but, oh, Uncle Joe, well, he's got a nose for that stuff. And he finds it real quick. And she'll hide his money. But Uncle Joe, you know, he ain't as backwards as all that. I mean, Dude's got a PayPal account. He'll just go up mountain and he'll get him some moonshine and come back home. Well, ain't Lou. She's also tried hiding his car keys instead of going and hunting down his car keys because, you know, he don't really have a nose for that. He will get on his riding lawnmower and he'll head down to the little tavern down the road and get his drinking done there. Well, one time he was gone, and Aunt Lou, she came up with this bright idea. She's like, I'll just scare it out of him. And she dressed up like the devil. I mean, she had hooves, horns, a pitchfork and a tail and a long black cloak to cover it all. And she knew about the time when Uncle Joe was going to be coming home. So she hid up behind the wood pile. Sure enough, here come Uncle Joe, parked the lawnmower and was walking up the rest of the drive to the house and passed the wood pile, and he was just singing to beat the band. Here's a Rocky time you'll always be Home sweet home to me. Good old Rocky Top. Rocky Top, Tennessee. Rocky top 10. And before he got a chance to finish that last little Tennessee line, he heard a Big old noise. And a Lou jumped out behind the wood pump.

Oh, Joe, I'm here to tell you something.

And Joe looked over. Who are you?

I'm the devil. You've got us change your drinking ways. You gotta quit that drinking as much. One of these days you gonna go fuck on off the top of that plant and you're gonna have to go down and live with me for a while.

Uncle Joe didn't react a bit like Aunt Lou thought he would. He walked up to that old devil and he said, well, howdy, I sure am glad to meet you. Too bad you didn't make it to the wedding when I married your sister. Now, here's an old family story. One time my papaw rented out his farmland to a city slicker from Memphis who wanted to be a farmer. Well, the boy came up to my papaw and he said, what am I going to need to be a farmer? And Papa told him all the things he was going to need. And he said, now, son, you're going to need you a big old Tennessee mule to plow that land. And the young man said, where am I gonna find a mule? And Papa told him, he said, well, you're gonna have to raise one up from a mule egg. And the man's eyes got big. And Papa said, now, I got one and it came from my finest mule, so you gonna have to promise you'll take care of it and you'll watch over it, just like you as a good mama mule. And the boy, yes, sir, yes, sir, I will. And Papa said, now you come back in an hour and a half or so and and I'll have it ready for you. And when the young man left, Papa ran out into the field and he picked up a great big old honeydew melon, took it up to the barn and whitewashed and put it in a little nest. And he made the prettiest little mule egg presentation that you ever saw. And the young man came back, and Papa, he picked up that mule egg and gave it to him. Oh, man, the city boy. You should have seen a smile on his face. And he hugged that mule egg up to his chest, and he was walking down to get into his new pickup truck, and he had his head down, just humming and singing to that mule egg. Lullaby, little mule, lullaby, little mule. And he wasn't paying no bit of attention where he was going, and he stumbled and fell on the foot bridge. Then he fell down and that mule egg went flying over the bridge and into the ditch and smashed into a hundred little pieces. And this little bunny rabbit, he got scared and he jumped up and he ran across that bridge and out into the woods. And that city slicker, he looked up at my papa and he said, I am so sorry I broke the mule leg. But I'm gonna tell you, as fast as that little baby mule was running, I wouldn't have been able to keep up with it anyway. Now one more thing before I go, I have the answer to an age old question. Why did the chicken cross the road? Well, I'm gonna tell you. The chicken crossed the road to get away from the Jack Daniels drinking, pickup truck driving blind woman from Tennessee carrying a KFC bucket and an air fryer.

I hope you enjoyed hearing stories about my great, big, wild, wonderful, wacky everything else Tennessee family. I really enjoyed doing that. I've always loved storytelling. When I was little, my dad had a lot of albums and a lot of them were storytellers. Andy Griffith was one of them. And there was one Charlie Douglas I really liked and he's the one where I got the story about the mule egg from. Another one was Jerry Clower. And all of these, one of the things they had in common is they were all about, you know, small towns, country life, families and friends. So that's what prompted me to choose these stories. They're three of my favorites. Now like I said earlier, I know that we have a world of talented people in Tennessee and I want to hear from you. I want to know what your talent is and a sample if you have one. And I would love to have all of you on my podcast, send me an email and let me know if you're interested and what your talent is and a sample if you have one and I can get back with you and we can do this. This is all about sharing, getting to know the blind and low vision people in Tennessee and other places too. I'm not restricting this just to people from Tennessee because everyone you know, all over has things to share and we can learn from each other. Learning and growing, sharing and knowing. I like that. So if you want to be a part of the podcast, send your ideas, suggestions, samples of your work if you have a talent. Stories. If you have, you know, a story, let me know. I want to share your story and your talent. Send an email to NFB newsline t n.org that's n f B N E W S L I n e t n.org I really want to hear from you. Thank you for joining me on this episode of NFB Newsline Tennessee Presents. I look forward to joining you again.

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