Bum Steer Awards 1981
(Page 3 of 3)
TO BOLDLY GO WHERE NO WOODPECKER HAS GONE BEFORE
NASA stated that the space shuttle was endangered by woodpeckers who thought the foam insulation covering a fuel tank was tree bark.
SURE, REX
Texas Tech football coach Rex Dockery, returning late from a recruiting trip, reported that he had boarded the wrong airplane and ended up in Acapulco by mistake.
THAT’LL TEACH HER
Toni Bingham had the highest grades of all graduates of Leonard High School in Fannin County, but school officials ranked her at the bottom of her class because she graduated a year early.
“BY THE WAY, SHERIFF, THE FUNERAL IS IN HAWAII”
A visiting con man who claimed his family had died in a car accident collected $500 at a truck stop and was driven to Dallas-Fort Worth Airport by Denton County sheriff’s deputies.
HE WAS RUSHING HOME TO GET THE WORDS TO THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER . . .
Willie Nelson, who appeared in state-sponsored TV ads advising drivers to obey the 55-mph speed limit, was ticketed for driving 85.
. . . BUT HE DIDN’T MAKE IT
During opening ceremonies of the Democratic convention, Willie Nelson made two errors while singing the National Anthem. He omitted two lines and reversed the order of “broad stripes and bright stars.”
BLAZING TOILETS
In Houston a woman was awarded $9.90 by Harris County commissioners after a commode in the courthouse basement rest room erupted, scalding her posterior. In Brownsville a toilet in Severa de la Pena’s home caught fire when leaking gasoline from a nearby service station seeped into her sewer line.
TRY SECONAL. LOTS OF IT
Four months after former state district judge Garth Bates began serving an eight-year sentence for accepting a bribe, Judge Thomas Routt of Houston ordered him freed from prison, saying, “I have to be able to sleep at night.”
ER, IT’S ONLY A SHORT DRIVE TO AUSTIN
The Waco Chamber of Commerce acquired a costumed “Wizard of Waco” whose function will be to attend conventions and make positive statements about Waco.
MEANWHILE, WE ARE SLEEPING BETTER AT NIGHT BECAUSE:
Former governor Dolph Briscoe announced that he might run for the U.S. Senate in 1982.
BUT WON’T HIS TAN HAVE THOSE UGLY STRIPES?
Dallas jail inmate Edward Moore went to court to ask that his hairdresser be admitted to his cell and that he be permitted to get exposure to sunlight “in amounts sufficient to restore natural skin tone.”
BUT ONLY IF IT RAINS
The Harris County Commissioners’ Court paid $115,000 for a study of local flooding that concluded it is unwise to build homes in floodplains.
NOW DO YOU HAVE ANY DOUBTS?
When federal judge Owen Cox asked if prospective jurors had any doubts about passing sentence in a drug case, Larry Creed of Corpus Christi answered that he thought drugs were a medical rather than a criminal problem. In response to further questioning, Creed said he thought the case was a waste of time and taxpayers’ money, whereupon Cox sentenced him to 24 hours in jail for contempt.
THEY SHALL RETURN
A six-man team of Army commandos, in full battle dress on a secret training mission near Brownfield, went the wrong direction, surrounded a farmhouse, and ended up being disarmed and hauled off by Terry County sheriff’s deputies.
NO TORNADOS WERE AVAILABLE
To protest a Braniff policy prohibiting air traffic controllers from flying free of charge, a Miami controller directed a flight from Dallas to fly toward a thunderstorm.
NOBODY NOTICED
Summer course schedules issued by Texas A&M included a map of the campus and a full schedule of classes — for the University of Oklahoma.
EVERYONE ELSE WAS TOO WEAK TO LEAVE
The newly arrived city manager of Deer Park resigned because the air around the Houston Ship Channel made him sick.
IT LANDED IN SOME FAT
A fire that did heavy damage to the Stop Smoking and Weight Control center in Austin was traced to a burning cigarette.
AND IT STOOD EVEN LONGER
An El Paso homebuilding crew, racing other workers in Albuquerque, erected a $38,500 home in 34 hours, 28 minutes.
SURE SHE DOES
Dr. Bailey Smith, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, stated in Dallas that “God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew.”
MILLIONS FOR DEFENSE, BUT NOT ONE CENT FOR CREDITORS
State Representative Sam Hudson of Dallas, responding to charges by an opponent that he had been sued more than 20 times and had 27 judgments against him totaling more than $51,000, said that being unable to pay his debts helped him relate to the residents of his district.
NO SHOWS — NEXT TIME, PLEASE DON’T FORGET TO SEND REGRETS TO:
• The Dallas chapter of ACORN, a low-income consumer rights group, put on a noisy protest demonstration against state railroad commissioner Jim Nugent outside the Dallas Athletic Club. Nugent, meanwhile, was speaking nine miles across town at the Dallas Country Club.
• The Bigfoot Research Society invited 238 Dallas-area scientists to hear evidence presented by a Canadian researcher. None of them showed up.
• Despite scheduled performances by well-known singers Jerry Jeff Walker and Ray Wylie Hubbard, only sixty tickets were sold for an anti-nuclear benefit concert in Fort Worth.
• SunFest ’80, an Austin solar power festival, was canceled because of rain.
• After predicting for five years that millions of Christians would be taken from earth to heaven between 1 and 3 p.m. on April 1, Willie Day Smith of Irving cloistered himself in his house to await the moment. He emerged, still earthbound, just before 5.
• Charles Smith placed an ad in the Dallas Morning News to recruit members for an organization called Friends of Richard Nixon. He received one response.
• Fred Beversdorf of Friona arranged for a 21-stop lecture tour of Texas to describe the benefits of pyramid power. He booked halls, ordered 30,000 leaflets, and brought in a guest speaker from Canada, but the first lecture in Arlington attracted only two reporters, two photographers, and a publicist.
• A star-studded “Because We Care” concert benefiting the American Heart Association was canceled in Dallas after 571 tickets were sold for 19,000-seat Reunion Area.
• In a Harris County election to choose the board of the Gulf Coast Community Services Association, ballots were cast by 900 voters out of a total of 67,979 eligible.
STARTING AT TACKLE FOR TEXAS A&M, WEIGHING 535 POUNDS . . .
Two Texas A&M football players were assigned identical jerseys with the number 74.
THAT’S A RELIEF
At a Washington news conference, Democrats for Reagan chairman Leon Jaworski endorsed the Republican nominee as “a competent extremist.”
THEY WERE PLEDGES AT THE KKK HOUSE
Before an SMU-University of Houston basketball game in Dallas, white SMU students displayed a poster urging the Mustangs to “Cage the CouGroes.”
NAW, ALVIN, YOU COME AND GET IT
Columbus farmer Alvin Pavlicek, held in lieu of $500,000 bond in the fatal shooting of his wife, placed the following ad in the Colorado County Citizen: “Anyone owing me money please mail it to my new address Alvin Pavlicek, Columbus Jail House, Cell No. 2.”
DEE-FENSE! DEE-FENSE!
McLennan Community College beat Kilgore College 169-165, the highest number of points ever recorded in any basketball game.
MAY THE LORD LIFT UP HIS COUNTENANCE UPON THEE AND GIVE
THEE A PIECE OF THE ACTION
A federal investigation revealed that an ambitious Bible distributor paid a $5000 bribe to get his Bibles on the shelves at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio.
AND THAT’S WHY THEY CALL THEM FELL-ONS
A convicted robber escaped from a Bexar County courtroom but later fell through the courthouse attic into the arms of a bailiff.
ON SECOND THOUGHT, I THINK THE COURTS WERE RIGHT
Former Alpine police chief Ace Moseley, who resigned last year saying he was tired of arresting drug dealers only to have the courts release them, was indicted on charges of possessing and conspiring to sell marijuana.
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