Stump County Ends Boycott

Stump County just ended our countywide boycott of The Southside Messenger out there in the real world. That means barefooted Editor Averett Jones hurt our feelings. He wrote about high school dropouts running the school system.

Since Stump County doesn’t even have a high school to drop out of, it hurt our feelings.  What really hurt was until then Averett was our hero. He is our only contact with the real world and the most educated person we’ve ever met even if it was second-hand from Half Whitt. What we liked most was according to Half, Jones has been kicked out of more colleges than all of Stump County has attended combined.

Here in Stump County we put more stock in common sense than education and it seems to us getting kicked out of college is a badge of honor since everyone knows education and commonsense don’t go together.

Well, we was having a great time holding anti-Averett town hall meetings which we learned about from Charlotte County, writing angry letters and complaining about him being mean and barefooted.

Then Half showed up at the meeting and “read to us out of the book.”

Half said, said he, “You folks is getting’ above your raisin’. You need to stop and use some of that commonsense you claim to have.  Besides, since The Southside Messenger don’t sell one newspaper or advertisement in Stump County your little boycott is about as useless as-as- supernumerary mammary development on a boar hog.”

Half explained that to us but he said educated folks would understand and the usual quote can’t go in a newspaper.

Then Half said, “Is it commonsense to fire somebody and leave them on the job for a year? Is it commonsense not to learn something about what you are doing before you do it?”

Commonsense says you want the most educated person you can find to do a job BUT that don’t mean college educated.  Education means knowing things.

Iffen you want someone to cut your timber you want someone who knows timber and knows how to do a good job and get you the best price.  Ya don’t want a Harvard PHD to cut your timber and you don’t want a timber cutter to run the space program.

Iffen you want a fence built you want an experienced (that means educated) fence builder.  When it’s time to kill hogs you want Zeb.

Iffen you want a wagon built or a corn crib or a new roof you call the best carpenter you can find that you can afford. That’s commonsense.

If you get hurt you want a doctor; iffen it is really bad you want a hospital. You want someone who knows how to fix what ails you.  And you want that doctor to have experience in what ails you.

And iffen you want someone to teach the chillans and run the school you want education or experience in running a big business, both if you can get it.

Jones wasn’t making fun of us here in Stump County; he was making fun of folks who don’t think education is important tryin’ to run the schools.

And that, Folks, is just plain old commonsense.

ppp

Trying to contact Half Whitt? You can email him at
half_whitt@yahoo.com.