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Highlands Today

Not As Dumb As You Think

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By Raleigh Whiteman | Highlands Today

Published: January 31, 2008

A redneck was stopped by a game warden in Central Mississippi recently with two ice chests full of fish. He was leaving a cove well-known for its fishing.

The game warden asked the man: "Do you have a license to catch those fish?"

"Nawsir" replied the redneck. "I ain't got none of them there licenses. You must understand these here are my pet fish."

"Pet fish?"

"Yeah. Every night I take these here fish down to the lake and let 'em swim round for awhile. Then when I whistle they jump right back into these here ice chests and I take em home."

"That's a bunch of hooey! Fish can't do that."

The redneck looked at the warden for a moment and then said: "It's the truth Mr. Government Man. I'll show ya. It really works."

"OK," said the warden. "I've got to see this!"

The redneck poured the fish into the lake and stood and waited.

After several minutes the warden says, "Well?"

"Well what?" says the redneck.

The warden says"When are you going to call them back?"

"Call who back?"

"The fish," replied the warden!

"What fish?" replied the redneck.

Moral of the story: We may not be as smart as some city slickers but we ain't as dumb as some government employees.

You can say what you want about the South, but you never hear of anyone retiring and moving north.

I was a northerner living in Tennessee in my younger years and this bit of trickery did not get passed on to me. It probably won't work here in Florida. If you get caught though it may be worth a try.

Who And What Won?

It's way too early Tuesday morning to even take a guess about who won the primary election here in Florida or whether Amendment 1 passed or failed. One thing for sure is that this is one of the most interesting voting years in my history of voting regardless of how it turns out. There will be "changes" for certain.

The amendment to the homestead has to be the most confusing and difficult to decide about which way to vote. It seems to me that whichever way it turns out that everyone who owns a home loses in some way or another. If it passes we will get another $25,000 exemption but the county will likely raise the sales tax a penny and gasoline another 2-3 cents a gallon. Well they are likely to do that anyway to pay for an asphalt plant which will likely be sitting unused.

Am I still so thick in the head that I am the only one who can figure out why Florida changed its primary voting date and lost the delegates who might have won?

And how many chauvinist voters are there who could never vote for a woman to be president and I'd bet that there are plenty of bigots going to the polls who say that a black man will never be president.

Raleigh Whiteman of Lake Placid is a contributing writer to Highlands Today. You can reach him on the Internet at rwwhiteman@comcast.net;

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