August 26 2006

Well gang, this week’s news has to do with what you could call a close knit family.
It seems that a couple that was married, were having a typical Friday night at home, drinking beer and shooting guns.
During the proceedings, it’s not quite certain how, Andrew shot off Suzanne’s little finger. He made a clean job of it, taking it off exactly at the knuckle.
The E.M.T. gave her a tetanus shot and sewed up the skin and couldn’t help but notice that she still had five fingers left.
He didn’t say any thing, and started asking Suzanne questions in order to fill out his report of the incident.
When asked for her full name, Suzanne answered "Suzanne Mcdonald-Mcdonald."
The E.M.T. said that he had never seen the same last name hyphenated like that, and Suzanne explained that the hyphen started with her grandmother, who felt that living high on the mountain her family name should be preserved. So, when she married her first cousin, another McDonald, she had the names hyphenated to read McDonald-McDonald.
"But how could she tell which one was hers?" asked the E.M.T.
"Why, her McDonald was the first one, of course." Suzanne said sweetly.
"oh." Said the E.M.T.
Meanwhile the police officer was questioning Andrew, and it turned out that his last name was McDonald-McDonald also, and it also turned out that Suzanne’s grandmother was his grandmother too.
"In our neck of the woods," Andrew explained, " If you didn’t marry a first cousin, you didn’t know what you were getting. I reckon that if we wanted to, we could hyphenate our last name seven or eight times."
"Yeah," said the policeman, "I noticed your wife used to have six fingers on that right hand of hers."
"That’s right," said Andrew, "and I have webbed feet too. You wanna see "em?"
"No, but thanks anyway." Said the policeman, as he walked over to Suzanne who was just finishing up with the E.M.T. "Do you want to press charges Mrs. McDonald-McDonald?"
"Heavens No!" she exclaimed. "If I hadn’t been so afraid of surgery, I’d have gotten rid of that thing years ago. Now I can drink tea with the other ladies without having that cluster of fingers sticking out the side of the cup."
Suzanne flung her arms around Andrew’s neck, and he stood there grinning sheepishly.
The E.M.T. and the policeman just looked at each other and started walking toward their vehicles.
What are you going to say?

Till next week
Helga Biermeister
Secretary